A Practical Guide to Choral Conducting

Harold Rosenbaum

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351673679
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Música

Rooted in the experience of a professional choral conductor, this book provides a guide to practical issues facing conductors of choral ensembles at all levels, from youth choruses to university ensembles, church and community choirs, and professional vocal groups. Paired with the discussion of practical challenges is a discussion of over fifty key works from the choral literature, with performance suggestions to aid the choral conductor in directing each piece.

Dealing with often-overlooked yet vital considerations such as how to work with composers, recording, concert halls, and choral tours, A Practical Guide to Choral Conducting offers a valuable resource for both emerging choral conductors and students of choral conducting at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Part 1

Leadership, Logistics, and Musical Insights

1 Responsibilities and Opportunities

Responsibilities

If you are considering choral conducting as a profession, you have chosen one unlike any other. Whether you are still considering the career, or keenly intent on improving your skills, it is important to maintain the ideal of this noble pursuit: choral conducting is an art form that involves, affects, and uplifts hundreds of millions of people across the world. There are a wide variety of roles and situations a choral conductor might take and find him/herself in. In addition to running rehearsals and conducting concerts, there will be other responsibilities, the scope of which depends on what your employer and/or board of directors wish you to do, plus what you, as a caring leader, wish to or need to do whether employed by a choral organization or running your own.

For school conductors, there will be the obvious tasks, which hopefully you can have your choir (AKA chorus) officers share, such as taking attendance, helping you to distribute music to your singers, and working with you on the many details of the concert, such as ensuring the piano is in tune and that there is ample lighting, designing and printing programs, and being sure the parents of all your singers know the date of the concert well in advance, and the obligation that your students have to sing in it.

For conductors hired by not-for-profit choirs, some of the above might be accomplished by other staff members or volunteers. Additional duties here might include helping to fundraise, attending board meetings, creating a “Message from the Conductor” to appear on the organization’s website and in the program booklet, recruiting, and submitting a budget to the board for approval.

For conductors who create their own not-for-profit corporation, additional responsibilities abound. First you must create a constitution and bylaws. The next step is to form a board of directors and a board of advisors. Elections for board member officers should then occur, including executive director, chair, vice chair, secretary, and treasurer. You must create stationery containing pertinent information about your organization. You will need to have regularly scheduled meetings throughout the year, have someone take the minutes, and distribute them to the board members after they are tidied up and deemed accurate by you. You will need to hire a bookkeeper and accountant. It will be a necessity to plan fundraising events and write grant applications, unless you have the means not to have to, or can hire someone to do those things for your organization. All donors will need thank-you letters, containing information required by the IRS, which they can give to their accountants. You will need to find a rehearsal space, create a website, find a webmaster to keep it updated, look for performance venues, and be prepared to work with artist managements and contractors of players and professional singers, should you need to hire any of the people they represent. All receipts will need to be saved for seven years lest you get audited by the government. A checking account and perhaps a savings account for the organization should be established.

And naturally you will dream and create—that is the fun part! You will envision concert programs and how to implement them, choose music that matches the abilities of your choirs and the desires of its members, and inspire your singers every moment of every rehearsal by letting your love of what you do and live for shine through.

Opportunities

When first starting out in the business, conductors may have yet to envision which types of choirs they would like to lead. Often, they find themselves in front of a type of choir they had not planned on directing. You do not need to be Christian to conduct a church choir, gay to conduct a gay choir, or a great singer to lead a choir. You do not need to be a concert pianist, although having sufficient piano skills to run rehearsals is a huge advantage. If you major in and enjoy music education, you are apt to conduct a school choir. You may wish to be an assistant conductor, a singing member, or an observer in a community choir. You would then be responsible to learn the entire repertoire and, if an opportunity arises, be prepared to step in to conduct. The regular conductor might even reward you with something to conduct in the concert, including allowing you to rehearse that music periodically with feedback from him/her.

Below is a list of the many categories of choirs from which to choose, as you contemplate your future, with descriptions of those you may have the opportunity to lead during your lifetime, both in and outside of school settings.

School Choirs

Elementary School

Begin them young! Singing in harmony is not required; piano accompaniment is. You can instill a joy in singing that will blossom throughout their lives. You can begin already to sprinkle in a bit of classical music, although your youngsters’ enjoyment, fulfillment, and fond memory of the experience later in life should be your priority.

Middle School

Even at this early age, there will be many children, especially those who were fortunate enough to be in a choir in elementary school, who will yearn to continue this musical activity. Do not fret about balance; chances are that there will be many more girls than boys in the choir. Middle school students often must choose a language to begin studying. Encourage your most talented musicians to study German, Italian, or French, since those will be the three foreign languages most used if they choose singing or conducting as their career. Looking back, they will be grateful for that input from you.

High School

By now, it will be an essential and much sought-after class for many students. After graduating, many students will be looking forward to majoring in music in universities. High school teachers should regularly include classical works in their concerts, since outside of academia there is less and less opportunity to experience them, and because it is your responsibility to enlighten and uplift your audience with a style of music with which they might be unfamiliar. In some cities, there are choral programs run by community or professional choirs that involve talented high school singers. Try to find and suggest extracurricular opportunities for your most talented students, such as that previously mentioned, plus all-county or all-state choirs, summer music camps, and church and community choirs. If a student shows you a composition he/she created, or sketches of one, be encouraging, even if the style is not to your personal liking. Your job is to embolden and inspire, not to criticize harshly. If there is a numerical or letter grading system for your choir, consider the passion and commitment as much as sheer vocal prowess. You might ponder giving someone who sight reads very well at least the same grade as someone with a better voice who cannot sight read well, all other things being equal.

University

Universities generally have more than one concert choir. A common occurrence is when there is a chamber choir which has a stringent or at least a somewhat arduous audition process, in addition to a much larger choir often open to members of the community as well, which either has an easy audition process or none. The creative and ambitious college choir conductor will take every opportunity to collaborate with the school orchestra or with small instrumental ensembles, to focus primarily on classical repertoire, to explore music from different eras and in different languages, and to provide solo work for his/her finest students, some of whom will have a career in music. It is also a time to expect professional-level behavior and responsibilities on every level, including exemplary attendance, musical preparation outside of the classroom, and appropriate concert attire.

Be assiduous in keeping the larger ensemble challenged and fulfilled. Even non-readers, or those who say they cannot read music, can learn much of the standard repertoire over time, or at least selections from large-scale works. Choruses from Handel’s Messiah always delight the audience, and there is great fulfillment in introducing that great work to people who have never sung it before. Doing so attracts an audience, especially during the holiday season. If doing only the Christmas portion (Part I), include the Hallelujah Chorus, which technically concludes Part II. With this larger group, you will likely have more interest mixing classical with non-classical repertoire, unless it has a solid tradition of presenting only masterworks with orchestra.

Community Choirs

These not-for-profit independent choirs are ambassadors to their communities, attracting people from all walks of life who look forward to making music after working all day, and who enjoy the inevitable social interactions that are an integral part of this experience. You should gauge both the limitations and the potential of these groups, and have endless patience with your singers, who are trying their utmost to make beautiful music together. It is counterproductive to display anger towards your singers. Some people think that a conductor who throws temper tantrums must be a great conductor. However, fear and anxiety are not ideal emotions needed to make your singers happy on a weekly basis, nor to encourage them to return from season to season.

Religious Choirs

Church

Church choirs are as diverse as the churches they serve. Most churches in America have one or two choirs: the senior adult choir plus perhaps a youth choir. Some have hand bell choirs, praise bands, and gospel choirs as well. Also, with larger churches come larger congregations and larger and diversified choirs.

Church choirs have less turnover than community choirs. For people of the community, there are more choices of choirs to join. However, once a singer becomes a member of a church, chances are that he/she will be devoted to its choir. Many churches augment their volunteers with professional section leaders, and some even have all-professional choirs.

Synagogue

Most synagogue choirs convene only once per year to sing for the High Holidays. The repertoire is dictated by the liturgy for the three holidays which constitute the High Holidays: Slichot, Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur. Many of the choral arrangements were made by 19th-century Eastern European composers. More recently, cantors have made arrangements that are used around the world. Singing in Hebrew is no challenge to the singers, since the liturgy is well known and the text is transliterated (using the English alphabet). It is essential that you read Hebrew well enough to follow the prayers being sung throughout the service, to know when to bring in the choir. This is less essential the more you get cues from the cantor, who sings much on his/her own, and sometimes in pieces involving cantor and choir. Naturally, if the service is in English, this is not a concern. Some synagogues hire a professional quartet or choir for the holidays, or section leaders to augment the volunteers.

Gospel

Usually associated with African-American churches, but present in schools, community centers, and in concert halls as well, these choirs carry on a great tradition dating back to the 17th century.

Professional Choirs

Few and far between, these are the crème de la crème of choirs. Great professional choirs outdo all others in certain areas: sheer power, sight-reading proficiency, language skills, beauty of tone, and natural expressivity. Besides producing concerts, conductors of professional choirs regularly collaborate with orchestras, conduct in festivals, and make commercial CDs.

Semi-Professional

This term is loosely and confusingly used. It is used equally to describe a choir comprised of both pros and amateurs, and an excellent amateur choir that is deemed good enough by the user of the term to be labeled semi-professional.

Youth Choirs

It is astounding how many fabulous youth choir organizations there are in the world. How lucky these children are to have opportunities to give concerts on their own, in addition to joining forces with adult choirs, orchestras, and opera companies (including the Metropolitan Opera), and to perform great works by Bach, Mozart, Britten, Puccini, Honegger, and countless other composers. Conductors of youth choirs have very special talents and are to be highly commended, for they foster a love of choral music in our children, and provide the apparatus for achieving numerous mental and physical benefits.

Boys and Girls Choirs

Both these types of choirs have blossomed in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, and they are quite active performing concerts, making recordings, and collaborating with orchestras and other ensembles.

Men and Boys Choirs

The centuries-old tradition of men and boys choirs has almost always been associated with churches and their affiliated schools, as well as independent boarding schools. The children in those schools are selected annually after a nationwide search, and besides academic courses, they have daily choir rehearsals. The men often double as teachers of those academic courses.

Opera Choruses

Many regional opera companies do not have choirs as components of their organization. If a choir is needed for a specific performance, the artistic director may recruit singers from his/her company or bring in a local choir whose members have been trained by their own conductor. If forming a new choir altogether, an outside conductor is often asked to recruit and train the singers. These singers may or may not receive a fee.

Corporate Choirs

Various big corporations form choirs comprised of their employees primarily to perform in lobbies and atriums at their headquarters and at their holiday parties.

Choirs of Other Cultures

In this category are the independent choirs composed primarily of immigrants or the children of immigrants from Russia, Bulgaria, and other countries. They afford us opportunities to witness the music of other cultures on an ongoing basis.

Gay and Lesbian Choirs

These have proliferated over the decades into an international movement, attracting many thousands of proud singers.

Barbershop/Sweet Adeline Choruses

There are many thousands of men and women in these choirs as well. Over the last few decades, choreography and costumes have come to play a larger and larger role in their performances.

Closing Remarks

Choral conductors deserve to receive compensation for their services. One common exception is where a conductor creates his/her own choir, and for at least a few seasons there is not enough money to pay for his/her skills. Like many professional singers, choral conductors often must seek other employment both in and outside of the field of music to make ends meet. Within the field of music, giving private lessons, coaching, transcribing and engraving music, and being hired as a soloist are possibilities. If a satisfactory overall salary can be garnered, even in a piecemeal fashion, it will be well worth it, since conducting a choir is a great honor and one of the most rewarding and gratifying professions.

Choral conducting is more a calling th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Part 1 Leadership, Logistics, and Musical Insights
• Part 2 Anthology
• Index