Conducting

Thursday took me up the M6 to Warrington for my second trip north-west in two days, this time to work with current LABBS chorus champions, Cheshire Chord Company. We were working on two songs at different stages of development - the first only recently off the page and thus still at a stage where it could be pulled around and played with considerably, the second a show-piece already in the performing repertoire where the task was to refine the execution of the vision.

Delegates on the Conducting Stream

Saturday saw the second of the days run by the Association of British Choral Directors Midlands region as replacement for the event snowed off in January. It was the first genuinely spring-like Saturday we have seen this year, and so in many ways it was a pity to spend it indoors, but at least it was good weather for travelling to and from.

For we had lots of delegates from outside the region - directors came down from Sheffield and up from Bristol and Surrey to participate, as well as from round the region itself. As a result we had a cohort of eleven delegates for the conducting stream, which is more or less perfect in size - enough people to get a genuine range of perspectives and experience, while few enough that everyone who wanted to could get some individual feedback on their own conducting.

Two of our delegates with our to-do list for the final session (of which more another day)If over the winter you had spotted the trailer for a Conductors' Day organised by the Association of British Choral Directors in January, you may have wondered why January came and went without my mentioning it and how it went. It was scheduled for January 19th, but if you live in the UK you may remember that the day before was the day we all woke up to several inches of snow.

It is one of our national sports to criticise ourselves roundly about how everyone just stops when we see a snowflake. But on the other hand, people were booked to come from quite a wide radius, and the chances of everyone making it there on time without difficulty were sufficiently slim to make it worth rescheduling. We ended up with two replacement dates for both the conducting and Sing Up streams, 16th Feb and 20th April, to try and accommodate as many delegates as possible.

A reasonably common conversation I have with directors when working with them on their technique is to suggest that they could usefully stop mouthing the words to the music they are conducting. They very rarely ask why (it is generally known to be a good idea), but they do object that it is very difficult. Well, I’m not going to argue with that.

But it’s probably worthwhile reflecting both on why people find it hard to stop doing this, and why they can become better directors if they do. It’s not so much that it’s a bad thing (though it can introduce specific technical flaws), but that it limits what you can achieve with your singers.

Further to my recent thoughts on what Transactional Analysis can teach us about what's going on when the conductor-choir relationship starts going wrong, it's worth having a think about a different way to model the relationships. This is the dramatic triangle developed by Eric Berne's student, Stephen Karpman.

The triangle is an interaction between three roles: the Victim, the Rescuer, and the Persecutor. Sometimes you might get three different parties involved in a relationship, each taking one corner of the triangle; alternatively, you might find two parties taking up two of the roles and casting others who are external to their interaction in the third.

Identifying the unhealthy dynamics in the relationship between a conductor and their choir is not the tricky bit. Most of the people whose comments sparked this series of posts could do that for themselves (and in fact were doing that when we had those conversations). The bigger challenge is to find ways to break the self-reinforcing patterns.

The bad news is that people can cling very hard to the games they are accustomed to playing - which is why we suck each other into them so readily. The good news is that if people stop getting the payoff their behaviour usually elicits, they will change their behaviour. That is, you can't change what other people do, but by changing what you do yourself, you can motivate them to change in response.

A number of recent conversations with choral directors and singers have had me thinking back to Eric Berne's classic book on Transactional Analysis Games People Play. This is the one that introduces the idea that people interact using a variety of ego states - acting as adults, parents or children - and that by understanding how people are adopting and reacting to these roles, we can break out of cycles of dysfunctional relationships into healthier patterns.

The conversations that have got me thinking about it have been those where people express frustration with each other's attitudes and behaviours. Directors feel that they are working their socks off while their singers are just along for the ride, or singers feel that their directors put a lot of pressure on them. Or, directors feels that their choirs are resistant to change, while their singers feel the directors lack respect for the choir's traditions.

So, I'm starting out by thinking through the kinds of relationships you find between conductors and their ensembles according to this model. What to do about it is the next question, which may have to wait for a follow-up post.

Saturday saw choral directors from around the UK brave the winds the floods of the previous few days to come to Birmingham for the second iteration of my Conduct with Charisma workshop. As I remarked after the last one, this kind of event brings with it that wonderful ensemble quality that you learn things together that you wouldn't learn exploring the subject by yourself. Filtering the material through the different perspectives, backgrounds and assumptions that the different participants bring with them gives everyone a rounder and more nuanced understanding than would otherwise be available. The social dimension of learning is about what you can learn as well as how