tibicen | Notes from the Quire reorg meeting of Sept 25, 2000

I dated this one! Here are the (my) notes (written Sept 26, 2000) from the Quire meeting of Sept 25, 2000, for discussing a reorganization of the Quire.

Fixed some spelling errors.

The Results of Last Night's Quire Meeting (as best Tibicen recollects)

First of all, I brought the promised "What Goes Into The Quire" document, and handed it out. People took some time to read it. It's long.

It starts with a very general sort of proposal, and we discussed that for a while. That proposal amounts to "running the group more collectively, breaking up the work among many people". Reasons this was a good thing were brought up. Concerns about feasibility and desirability were brought up. We decided to give it a shot.

* Plan and Process *

We agreed on the following things. (If I've missed any, sing out.)

(0) We're going to try to do a division of labor. We're going to try to spread the work among as many people as possible.

(1) This is an experiment, so, now, we're going to set an end date at which point we review and evaluate the experiment: the first meeting after May Day (which is a traditional gig for us), will be given over to that purpose and to deciding where we go from there.

    (1.1) We will also have a review meeting after our next gig, which should be something to do with Christmas/12th Night/Yule.

(2) Yeliz and I reserve first crack at generating the over-all job descriptions from the "WGITQ" doc, along the lines of division of labor discussed at the meeting. We will do this with all haste, and send it to the list for commentary and contribution.

    (2.1) Everyone is invited to write up a job description for the/a job that they'd be willing to do, and send it to Spagna.

    (2.2) We'll collectively work on getting the job descriptions of what people want/are willing to do and what needs to be done to tesselate such that things don't fall between the cracks. We'd do such negotiations here on the list, but be sure to make opportunities for the non-net connected to participate in the process.

(3) We agreed that we still haven't decided a whole bunch of stuff, and that we have a lot to figure out, and that we'll try to do so swiftly.

    (3.1) And as soon as we have even vague ideas of what we're doing, we should tell the rest of the Barony.

* Principles, Ideas, Offerings *

The following principles came out of the discussion and seemed to be regarded as good:

(0) We're not trying to make work, or grow the job, we're just trying to get the basics done. Only once we manage that can we get ambitious.

    (0.1) The point is not to invent a bunch of officerships just to make bureaucracy, it's to spread the responsibility around.

    (0.2) None of us has infinite time to spend on this. And we'd rather be singing.

(1) We should organize around gigs, but with deliberate occasional breaks in the schedule to do non-gig stuff.

    (1.1) We can have different musical directors for different gigs. That way, people who want to run only certain artistic projects could, without being saddled with the administrative overhead or an indefinite commitment. Therefore we should have a paradigm in which directors volunteer/sign-on to do specific gigs, projects, or jobs.

    (1.2) Singers would commit on a by-gig basis.

    (1.3) This will require coordination, communication and advance planning, but one of the groovy side effects of coordination, communication and advance planning is that we could better tell the rest of the barony what we were doing in time, say, for it to get in the Minuscule.

    (1.4) By taking non-gig breaks in the schedule, directors and singers get a break from the commitment level. By taking breaks from gig-oriented rehearsals, we can do more sing-alongs, workshops, etc. This could include both activities for people not interested in singing with us regularly, and it could include development work for regular singers.

    (1.5) We need continuity of management.

(2) People stepped forward to indicate an interest/willingness to take on jobs as follows. Note that the job descriptions are still highly fluid and under negotiations.

    (2.1) Orlando -- something which seems to map pretty closely to the old job of the librarian, plus Silly Blue Folder dissemination

    (2.2) Naomi & Margoton -- Junior/Assistant/In-Training directors of some sort. Naomi specifically mentioned being interested in learning to run rehearsal (maybe gigs?), if someone else provided the material.

    (2.3) Tibicen -- possibly interested in directing a yule gig, if she gets assistant director(s) to shoulder part of running rehearsals. Would provide material. Also agreed to type this up and send it out, and to start talking to potential guest directors. (We need a better name than "guest". "Artistic Director"?)

    (2.4) Eowyn -- Reporting to Council, "some administrative stuff"

    (2.5) Yeliz -- Might be willing to guest direct again some day.

    (2.6) There's still plenty to do, and people left over.

        (2.6.1) We noted the demand for a "Secretary", to take notes and to type up stuff like this. :)

(3) Observations were made (sorry, uncertain of attributions) which stuck in Tibicen's mind to the effect that:

    (3.1) We don't have much of a presence in the Barony and we're not very good at communicating to the rest of the Barony. They don't necessarily know we exist, and even if they did, it would be a miracle if they found rehearsal (e.g. the web page, the minuscule being out of date).

    (3.2) We've gigged very little in the last year.

        (3.2.1) People on the outside think of us as a gig-oriented group, and those not interested in gigging are staying away.

        (3.2.2) People on the inside think of us as not very gig-oriented, and those interested in gigging lose interest in the Quire.

        (3.2.3) The quire loses.
    (3.3) We want (there seemed to be agreement) more prominent at events. We want our role to be larger or more important; that would be more satisfying and rewarding.

        (3.3.1) We're still unclear on how to do that.

    (3.4) There will be some serious coordination issues with multiple artistic directors, multiple office holders, which we'll need to work out.

        (3.4.1) How is rehearsal time split between concurrent gig prep?

        (3.4.2) How do we decide which gigs to do, which directors to have, if we have a choice?

        (3.4.3) How does an artistic director know which voices they'll have?

        (3.4.4) How do we make sure everyone knows what's going on?

        (3.4.5) Etc.

****** Fin *******

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

cellio

It's interesting to see all this (and compare to our choir). Thanks for sharing.

Around the time y'all were having these discussions, what did the "shape" of the Quire look like? Approximately how often did you do gigs (and were they evenly distributed or lumpy)? How many singers were there, and what proportion tended to be available for any given gig on average? Did you maintain standing repertoire, or was music prepared for one gig and then set aside? Were you dealing with a wide range of skills and/or interest levels, or was there a common understanding of baseline expectations (have these skills, make this proportion of rehearsals, do this homework, etc)?

From:

tibicen

Around the time y'all were having these discussions, what did the "shape" of the Quire look like?

Weeeell, it was a long time ago, so to the best of my recollection:

Approximately how often did you do gigs (and were they evenly distributed or lumpy)?

Four to six times a year I think?

How many singers were there, and what proportion tended to be available for any given gig on average?

We tended to field about 12 singers. I think the biggest was 16. But the guild email list – which shared with the instrumentalists – had a total of about 45 people at this point.

Did you maintain standing repertoire, or was music prepared for one gig and then set aside?

Mostly the latter – but we also reused reportoires. So, for instance, once you learned the May Day songs, you knew them, and they didn't change much.

Were you dealing with a wide range of skills and/or interest levels, or was there a common understanding of baseline expectations (have these skills, make this proportion of rehearsals, do this homework, etc)?

This is where things get really interesting.

At about the point this was happening, we were at a very interesting point in the group's development.

As far as skills, nominally, there was no official bottom edge to the skill set. However, pragmatically, in such a small group, every singer is very exposed, so you needed to have some combination of chutzpah, ganas, or skill, or it was a very aversive experience.

So while we didn't audition – all gigs were open to all – we wound up with a de facto skill floor. It wasn't very high, but it wasn't the complete bottom either.

As far as interest, and more pertinently expectations – the culture of the group.

Well.

When Master Henry came down from Ruantallan to visit us (this was prior the re-org), after singing in with us at a rehearsal, he told me, "I've sung with much better choruses. But I don't think I've ever sung with a group that was as professional."

We might not be very good, but: there, on time, with blue folder in hand, maybe water bottle, pencil, there to sing early music, no resistance to getting right down to it. Members did zany things like actually practice. Or prepare special personalized editions of the score to make it easier/better for them to learn/perform. Basically never had the slightest trouble with people showing up for the gigs they agreed to do. We're memorizing fifty lines of sung Latin for a fully staged play? Sure. Learning five minutes of three-part Russian with no discernable bars? Sure. Road-tripping where? Okay! Had people show up at rehearsals with 103F fevers rather than relinquish solos.

In the Quire, members took (and I hope still take) a much, much bigger share of responsibility for their own personal performance – and for the collective outcome – than in most amateur singing groups. Our rehearsals also worked very differently than any other small amateur vocal ensemble I've ever seen, which I think is primarily what blew Henry's mind.

There's a whole story there of how we got to this culture. I think swapping to this organization helped bolster it, because it reinforced that individual responsibility taking for the collective.

From:

cellio

Wow. The level of professionalism you describe seems pretty unusual. It's the sort of thing I tried to instill in On the Mark, which -- while this was never explicit -- was in contrast to the local SCA choir and consort at the time.

The Debatable Choir did some introspection and made some changes about a year ago. We were (and are) pretty large, about 25 now. And because we're open to anybody and don't audition, but we've also been around for 30 years, we had this bilateral split forming: experienced singers who wanted to do hard stuff, make clear progress each week, and cut the chit-chat, and inexperienced singers, some of whom couldn't read music, who were freaked the hell out by that and (often) were looking for a more social experience.

Our choir isn't gig-centered; that is, we're always working toward the next performance(s), but it's not a matter of "these people will gather and practice for this, and these other people will gather and practice for that". (Except for me and one other Jew who cares; we drop out for 2.5-3 months when they start learning Christmas music every year. Which they vary so it doesn't get boring, but that's why it costs 2.5-3 months.) To address the conflicting needs, we've done a mix of more subgroups (one piece, rehearsed separately), expecting everybody who's *not* in the room with the director and the piano to be learning their parts in other rooms concurrently, guest conductors (for one song), and building back up a repertoire of easier music that we don't have to spend tons of time on but will stop and teach as needed. This seems to be working out for us (except that our host doesn't have enough rooms for that six-part piece we learned recently :-) ). I should write more about this in my own journal.

The varying desires for socializing and professionalism are still there, but this pushes them out of the limelight some. I don't imagine that the altos run their sectional the same way the tenors do, but it's worked out ok. Everybody has access to MP3s of either the whole song or just your part (with the other parts quietly in the background) -- technology that wasn't readily available back in the day but is easier now.

Splitting that baby is hard sometimes.

From:

tibicen

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.