In July 2007 I wrote about choral conducting (It’s just a bit of hand waving) and about the assumptions we sometimes make about what our hand gestures mean. After last week’s post on often having to repeat ourselves in rehearsals (I’m only going to say this once), I began to wonder how much of the job of perfecting a piece is down to rehearsing, and how much can be left to the performance itself. In other words, how much of the work can be done by the conductor in the moment, rather than by drilling in the rehearsal room?
When I first started choral conducting, like many other community choir leaders I had no specific training in the art. I had a good sense of timing and musicality, and kind of blundered through with a few basic gestures. Over time I have refined these gestures and in their turn, the choir have become more attentive to me in general and to subtle changes in my hand waving. I feel that I have far more control in performances than I ever did and the choir enjoy (I hope!) being able to respond in the moment. I might decide to take a passage much more quietly than we ever did in rehearsal because I am aware that the audience is really listening and being super-attentive. I might decide to repeat a section because things are going really well, the audience are clearly enjoying the song, and it would be great if it went on a little longer. Because of the acoustic of the space I might decide to repeat the ending several more times than in rehearsal because the effect of getting quieter and quieter can be clearly heard and is much more effective in this space than in our rehearsal room. And so on.
If we have a good, clear, fairly large repertoire of conducting gestures, might we not just practice the notes and singing quality (vocal technique, lyricism, breathing, etc.) of a song in rehearsal, but leave the overall structure and dynamics of it until the actual performance? (Of course, this doesn’t really apply to the classical repertoire, or more structured and complex pieces whose structure is pretty much set in advance). In this case the choral director becomes more of a musician who is ‘playing’ the ‘instruments’ (voices) that are available.
Do others of you leave more (or less) scope in the actual performance, or are you happier with totally nailing things down in rehearsal? Personally I’m always in favour of leaving a little space for improvisation or responding to the moment — it keeps the choir on their toes and means that the song becomes truly alive!
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1 comments:
There are three factors here:
1. Your gesture must be consistent and readable. The latter, believe it or not, is actually a learned skill, whether you learn it in a classroom or by trial and error. By "consistent" I mean you provide more-or-less the same gesture when you want the same effect, not that you always conduct a given piece the same way.
2. Your group must be familiar with reading your gesture and watching for changes. This must be addressed during rehearsal, perhaps directly using what I call "stupid conductor tricks" such as inserting arbitrary changes of tempo or dynamics -- this can be a fun game to make warmups (or drill) more interesting. It can also be a useful tool in rehearsal to have the power to insert a fermata to hold a chord which needs to be tuned or something.
3. The group must trust that following your gesture will lead to a more satisfying musical result. This can take years to accomplish. I know one church choir where the conductor has an excellent gesture and the singers are quite experienced and used to watching, but they often tune out his interpretations because they often make no sense.
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