So, how we got there was a mixture of several forces that came together serendipitously.
One of them was precisely around splitting that baby, and I like to think was a key part.
When I joined the Quire in, oh, 1990? it was a lot like you describe the Debatable Choir, only smaller (12 to 16 pp). Over the next ten years, there was a very gradual evolution in the group's skill level.
Oddly enough, I think it's partially because we went from directors who were instrumentalists, who could play the parts for the singers, to directors who basically were not. And this had a bit of a discouraging effect on the practice of playing lines for singers.
Another part is that there was a huge (75%?) overlap with the Waytes. The Waytes read. That's actually pretty much an actual requirement; and it's customary among instrumentalists, so it basically never comes up. So we had this substantial population of singers all of whom could read music, even if they couldn't necessarily sight sing
But we also had people who could sight sing.
So the group gradually drifted, over the course of about a decade, from the practice of introducing a new piece by having the director play each of the parts for the group, to the first stab at it being an all-parts cold sight-read.
This came to a head at one particular rehearsal, when the director handed out a new piece of music.
"Hey," objected one of the sopranos, who was not an instrumentalist. "You know, not all of us read music. It feels unfair that you're expecting us to sight read."
Someone else (the director?) replied that they weren't expected to read – they could wait out the first time through to learn it from those who could read.
"But why not just play it so all of us learn it together?" objected another non-reader.
And I explained this: "For those of us who do sight-sing – especially those of us learning to sight-sing – the point is not just to find out what the piece sounds like so we can sing it. It's like solving a crossword puzzle. We want a chance to puzzle it out, without being told how it goes. We want a chance to try to figure it out without being told the answer. We can't sight-sing it after it's been played for us, because then we know the answer. So we'd like a chance to do that. It could be just once chance, and then if we don't get it, the instruments come out. But we'd like to do this, because it's really our only opportunity to practice this skill,
especially in part music."
And the non-readers all blinked, and said, "Oh! Huh. I hadn't thought of it that way. That makes a lot of sense." And the entire group agreed that the policy of the Quire would be that first crack at any new piece would be an a capella sight-sing, so that people who liked to sight-sing and wanted to learn to sight-sing would be supported in that. Anybody who didn't want to try reading, was welcome to sit it out and just follow along. And the instruments would always be available to fall back on.
Completely unexpected consequence: all those non-readers? Learned to sight-read apparently by osmosis organically over the next few years.
While there's always an instrument if necessary – and to give pitches – generally speaking, the Quire rehearsals were entirely a capella, with no lines given.
I wonder if one of the effects of my explaining that sight-reading is like doing a crossword puzzle is that the non-readers stopped thinking of it as a "difficult skill to master", i.e. a chore to acquire, to, well, a potentially fun game to play. I mean, we were having this conversation at MIT. If you tell someone bright, "We're trying to figure this out for the fun of it", their response tends to me, "...wait. Let me see."
I also think it effected a subtle change in the members' sense of what the group was for. What is the purpose of a chorus? Is it to make music?
Or is it to make musicians?
This is the first time in my tenure with the group that the Quire (as opposed to the Waytes, where I was prety staunch in this philosophy from the get-go) asserted that the purpose of the Quire was to provide members with an opportunity to develop their musical skills – that the Quire had an educational mission, and that one of the questions the Quire and its leadership should be asking was not just "how do we get the best possible music out of the throats of the most people in the time available before this gig" but "what musical learning opportunities can we and should we be providing our members?"
Not just what we can get out of members, but what we can put into them.
Maybe I'm imagining it, but I think this subtle thing had further subtle effect, by basically explicitly shifting the purpose of the group. We were still there to make music. But the purpose wasn't just to show up and sing. It was to learn to be a better singer. But not that someone was going to teach you, necessarily. Quire practice became a bit more like fighter practice, and fencing practice, and archery, and thrown weapons practices – I should mention that at one point the Waytes had the Baronial Archery Champion, the Baronial Thrown Weapons Champion, and one other Baronial Champion I forget which one ("We may not be the best early music group in the world, but we are the best armed early music group in the world.") – all things you do to get better, not burn down a playlist.
And of course, like dance practice – this is Carolingia, after all.
Our being professional was that members started treating Quire practice the fighters treat fight practice: there to practice one's skills, to drill, to get pointers, to find out what one needs to work on. There to get better at the activity. Members took responsibility for their own performances – the same way anyone in any Scadian martial art takes responsibility for their own performances, but in a way that is pretty much not how chorus members generally behave.
Quire practices were run quite differently than most chorus rehearsals – different than you describe at Debatable Choir – but perhaps more like how professional early music choruses rehearse.
When a new piece was introduced we read it. Generally the next thing to happen, by general acclaim was, "Let's take that again from the top."
What happens next in most choruses is that the director then says, "Okay, let's take it from bar 44..." and, having identified a place there was a problem, has the chorus work on that. Or maybe has just one voice part work on it to iron out a problem. The director tracks where the problems are and steps the group, together or in parts, through the places there were errors or other infelicities.
What happened next in the Quire is that the director then says, "Okay, who needs what?" And individual quiristers request what they need to work on: "I would like if we could take it from bar 44, I was unclear on how the rhythm goes." And the director says, "Okay, bar 44." And then maybe the singer who requested it says, "Okay, got it! Thanks!" Or maybe the group discusses the passage from bar 44. Maybe somebody else says, "You guys actually came in a beat early, which is why you were on the wrong pitch – you are trying to take your pitch from the tenors, but they're still singing a G at that point." And they go, "OH!" and then we try the passage again and it all goes much better.
And then the director says, "What else?" or "Any other requests?" And everybody gets a chance to request whatever they think would assist them in learning their part. They might request:
• The whole Quire sing a passage.
• Their section sing a passage.
• A combination of sections – "Altos and tenors", e.g. – sing a passage.
• That their line be played on an instrument.
• That someone give them a count of the rhythm.
• That the group "ping" the piece (an exercise that reveals imprecisions.)
Now, the director may also have noticed problems, and can do what directors regularly do. But Quire rehearsals of new music generally consisted of quiristers requesting what they needed to work on to get the piece down. And then directors could focus on things like expressiveness, artistic decisions, historical pronounciation, etc.
It was often the case that when someone made a request, others would way, "Oh, me too." Like, "I was confused about the entrances at 16." Also, sometimes people would say, "I'm not convinced that we altos were doing the right thing at 30, could we try that, just us?" Or "I'm dubious that the tenors made it up to their D. Could you guys try that again?" So it was very collaborative, and if someone was shy, they didn't have to speak up – other people speaking up would include them. But the shy ones quickly learn that this sort of request-driven rehearsal is how the group functions, and it's totally normalized and convivial, and they quickly start doing it.
We approximately never had break-out sectionals in a different room. If you needed a sectional with your part, you did it in front of the rest of the group, so they could make observations and give feedback.
Sometimes if someone – or a whole section – is having trouble getting it, after several stabs, they might say, "I'm having trouble getting this. I'll tackle this on my own, and not hold up rehearsal," and we'd move on.
This style of rehearsal is way, WAY more active, interactive, involving, and engaging than showing up and passively obeying a director. I think that's one reason the group didn't have trouble with chit-chat. We were talking. Lots. About things like, "Basses, that B is supposed to be flat," and "Maybe try counting?", and "what do we do with this time change?" We're kibbitzing, but kibbitzing about things like "Do we think there's a missing ficta here or not?"
It is a totally different experience of rehearsing. It's a hell of a lot more fun, and it's wildly effective. Nobody has to tune out mentally while other parts are being run – you're listening and giving them assistance and feedback. Nobody gets to put their brain in neutral and coast; the responsibility for figuring out where the problems are falls back on every member of the Quire. We have the benefit of the whole chorus putting their brains to figuring out how to make it better, instead of relying on one director to be the only person debugging. It deeply cultivated each singer's sense of personal responsibility for their musical development and their performance; and it got people into a self-reflective, self-improving mindset – regularly asking oneself, "What do I need to do to learn this music?" – that I think gradually paid dividends in increased musical skill.
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Date: 2018-05-14 02:27 am (UTC)So, how we got there was a mixture of several forces that came together serendipitously.
One of them was precisely around splitting that baby, and I like to think was a key part.
When I joined the Quire in, oh, 1990? it was a lot like you describe the Debatable Choir, only smaller (12 to 16 pp). Over the next ten years, there was a very gradual evolution in the group's skill level.
Oddly enough, I think it's partially because we went from directors who were instrumentalists, who could play the parts for the singers, to directors who basically were not. And this had a bit of a discouraging effect on the practice of playing lines for singers.
Another part is that there was a huge (75%?) overlap with the Waytes. The Waytes read. That's actually pretty much an actual requirement; and it's customary among instrumentalists, so it basically never comes up. So we had this substantial population of singers all of whom could read music, even if they couldn't necessarily sight sing
But we also had people who could sight sing.
So the group gradually drifted, over the course of about a decade, from the practice of introducing a new piece by having the director play each of the parts for the group, to the first stab at it being an all-parts cold sight-read.
This came to a head at one particular rehearsal, when the director handed out a new piece of music.
"Hey," objected one of the sopranos, who was not an instrumentalist. "You know, not all of us read music. It feels unfair that you're expecting us to sight read."
Someone else (the director?) replied that they weren't expected to read – they could wait out the first time through to learn it from those who could read.
"But why not just play it so all of us learn it together?" objected another non-reader.
And I explained this: "For those of us who do sight-sing – especially those of us learning to sight-sing – the point is not just to find out what the piece sounds like so we can sing it. It's like solving a crossword puzzle. We want a chance to puzzle it out, without being told how it goes. We want a chance to try to figure it out without being told the answer. We can't sight-sing it after it's been played for us, because then we know the answer. So we'd like a chance to do that. It could be just once chance, and then if we don't get it, the instruments come out. But we'd like to do this, because it's really our only opportunity to practice this skill, especially in part music."
And the non-readers all blinked, and said, "Oh! Huh. I hadn't thought of it that way. That makes a lot of sense." And the entire group agreed that the policy of the Quire would be that first crack at any new piece would be an a capella sight-sing, so that people who liked to sight-sing and wanted to learn to sight-sing would be supported in that. Anybody who didn't want to try reading, was welcome to sit it out and just follow along. And the instruments would always be available to fall back on.
Completely unexpected consequence: all those non-readers? Learned to sight-read apparently by osmosis organically over the next few years.
While there's always an instrument if necessary – and to give pitches – generally speaking, the Quire rehearsals were entirely a capella, with no lines given.
I wonder if one of the effects of my explaining that sight-reading is like doing a crossword puzzle is that the non-readers stopped thinking of it as a "difficult skill to master", i.e. a chore to acquire, to, well, a potentially fun game to play. I mean, we were having this conversation at MIT. If you tell someone bright, "We're trying to figure this out for the fun of it", their response tends to me, "...wait. Let me see."
I also think it effected a subtle change in the members' sense of what the group was for. What is the purpose of a chorus? Is it to make music?
Or is it to make musicians?
This is the first time in my tenure with the group that the Quire (as opposed to the Waytes, where I was prety staunch in this philosophy from the get-go) asserted that the purpose of the Quire was to provide members with an opportunity to develop their musical skills – that the Quire had an educational mission, and that one of the questions the Quire and its leadership should be asking was not just "how do we get the best possible music out of the throats of the most people in the time available before this gig" but "what musical learning opportunities can we and should we be providing our members?"
Not just what we can get out of members, but what we can put into them.
Maybe I'm imagining it, but I think this subtle thing had further subtle effect, by basically explicitly shifting the purpose of the group. We were still there to make music. But the purpose wasn't just to show up and sing. It was to learn to be a better singer. But not that someone was going to teach you, necessarily. Quire practice became a bit more like fighter practice, and fencing practice, and archery, and thrown weapons practices – I should mention that at one point the Waytes had the Baronial Archery Champion, the Baronial Thrown Weapons Champion, and one other Baronial Champion I forget which one ("We may not be the best early music group in the world, but we are the best armed early music group in the world.") – all things you do to get better, not burn down a playlist.
And of course, like dance practice – this is Carolingia, after all.
Our being professional was that members started treating Quire practice the fighters treat fight practice: there to practice one's skills, to drill, to get pointers, to find out what one needs to work on. There to get better at the activity. Members took responsibility for their own performances – the same way anyone in any Scadian martial art takes responsibility for their own performances, but in a way that is pretty much not how chorus members generally behave.
Quire practices were run quite differently than most chorus rehearsals – different than you describe at Debatable Choir – but perhaps more like how professional early music choruses rehearse.
When a new piece was introduced we read it. Generally the next thing to happen, by general acclaim was, "Let's take that again from the top."
What happens next in most choruses is that the director then says, "Okay, let's take it from bar 44..." and, having identified a place there was a problem, has the chorus work on that. Or maybe has just one voice part work on it to iron out a problem. The director tracks where the problems are and steps the group, together or in parts, through the places there were errors or other infelicities.
What happened next in the Quire is that the director then says, "Okay, who needs what?" And individual quiristers request what they need to work on: "I would like if we could take it from bar 44, I was unclear on how the rhythm goes." And the director says, "Okay, bar 44." And then maybe the singer who requested it says, "Okay, got it! Thanks!" Or maybe the group discusses the passage from bar 44. Maybe somebody else says, "You guys actually came in a beat early, which is why you were on the wrong pitch – you are trying to take your pitch from the tenors, but they're still singing a G at that point." And they go, "OH!" and then we try the passage again and it all goes much better.
And then the director says, "What else?" or "Any other requests?" And everybody gets a chance to request whatever they think would assist them in learning their part. They might request:
• The whole Quire sing a passage.
• Their section sing a passage.
• A combination of sections – "Altos and tenors", e.g. – sing a passage.
• That their line be played on an instrument.
• That someone give them a count of the rhythm.
• That the group "ping" the piece (an exercise that reveals imprecisions.)
Now, the director may also have noticed problems, and can do what directors regularly do. But Quire rehearsals of new music generally consisted of quiristers requesting what they needed to work on to get the piece down. And then directors could focus on things like expressiveness, artistic decisions, historical pronounciation, etc.
It was often the case that when someone made a request, others would way, "Oh, me too." Like, "I was confused about the entrances at 16." Also, sometimes people would say, "I'm not convinced that we altos were doing the right thing at 30, could we try that, just us?" Or "I'm dubious that the tenors made it up to their D. Could you guys try that again?" So it was very collaborative, and if someone was shy, they didn't have to speak up – other people speaking up would include them. But the shy ones quickly learn that this sort of request-driven rehearsal is how the group functions, and it's totally normalized and convivial, and they quickly start doing it.
We approximately never had break-out sectionals in a different room. If you needed a sectional with your part, you did it in front of the rest of the group, so they could make observations and give feedback.
Sometimes if someone – or a whole section – is having trouble getting it, after several stabs, they might say, "I'm having trouble getting this. I'll tackle this on my own, and not hold up rehearsal," and we'd move on.
This style of rehearsal is way, WAY more active, interactive, involving, and engaging than showing up and passively obeying a director. I think that's one reason the group didn't have trouble with chit-chat. We were talking. Lots. About things like, "Basses, that B is supposed to be flat," and "Maybe try counting?", and "what do we do with this time change?" We're kibbitzing, but kibbitzing about things like "Do we think there's a missing ficta here or not?"
It is a totally different experience of rehearsing. It's a hell of a lot more fun, and it's wildly effective. Nobody has to tune out mentally while other parts are being run – you're listening and giving them assistance and feedback. Nobody gets to put their brain in neutral and coast; the responsibility for figuring out where the problems are falls back on every member of the Quire. We have the benefit of the whole chorus putting their brains to figuring out how to make it better, instead of relying on one director to be the only person debugging. It deeply cultivated each singer's sense of personal responsibility for their musical development and their performance; and it got people into a self-reflective, self-improving mindset – regularly asking oneself, "What do I need to do to learn this music?" – that I think gradually paid dividends in increased musical skill.
Really, I can't recommend it highly enough.