While the general considerations are important musical bases for the choice of music, it is also true that factors other than musical ones often enter into the selection of music. These may include music for specific occasions, rehearsal time, lack of instruments, lack of reading skills by the choir, a mediocre or poor accompanist, lack of funds to purchase desired music, and still others that are peculiar to any given situation.
Another most important factor to consider, in addition to the amount of time that has to be spent searching for repertoire (which is considerable), is the type of time that must be used in this search. This refers to the fact that not only is this task extremely time-consuming, but that most of it must be done on the choral director's own time, outside the normal teaching day. Most schools allow a small portion of each day for planning but, in reality, most of this time is spent either complying with the latest paperwork request from the principal's office or spending some deserved moments relaxing in the teacher's lounge.
The choral director's situation in the educational system is quite unique. The high school teacher in mathematics, science, or English, for instance, usually has his program planned for him either by means of a schoolwide curriculum, departmental syllabus, or more often than not, by a text that will carry him through the school year. They are expected to cover the material in question during their specified number of class periods. This is not the case in the choral music department. A choral portfolio of materials that can serve as a text for the year for every situation has not yet been designed. This leaves the choral director to plan an entirely new curriculum for each schoolyear, and he has to do ninety-five percent of it on his own time! If this seems a bit staggering to a young teacher, it should. To have the sole responsibility to plan the educational goals for the year, to determine the means by which one hopes to achieve those goals, and then to step in as the teacher is, indeed, a most unusual educational challenge and opportunity. In short, the choral director in a secondary school is usually a curriculum coordinator, budget supervisor, teacher and finally, conductor.
Because time and energy are important to a busy director, it is best to determine a method to develop a reference file. There are various ways that this can be done, including the obvious procedure of keeping the copies that you are interested in, and throwing away those that you do not care to use. This is actually not a method however, but the beginning of a method of cataloging information for future use.
It is first necessary to find music, and there are several ways to do this. One is to have your name placed on the mailing list of music publishers and dealers. Publishers are most happy to place copies of music in the hands of people who will want to buy their product. Of course, this means that you will receive many selections in which you will not be interested. Situations change, however, so it is best to examine all good music regardless of your immediate needs.
Attendance at workshops and clinics allows one to take advantage of reading sessions that offer music often selected by other directors. These sessions provide selected, rather than unsolicited, repertoire and many of them are most worthwhile. Also available at many of these sessions are repertoire lists. The disadvantage of lists is that you have no music to examine. However, you can take advantage of someone else's research and order reference copies of every work in which you are interested.
Conventions offer many of the above opportunities plus many concerts. These concerts, by carefully selected ensembles, will usually contain interesting and stimulating repertoire. Conductors are aware of the makeup of professional convention audiences and want to put their best possible repertoire on display. Again, it is best to order a copy of each piece with which one is unfamiliar.
In addition to the above sources, several professional organizations offer lists of recommended repertoire. Several publications are available from the Music Educators National Conference, the American Choral Directors Association, and the American Choral Foundation. Informatioin on these organizations can be found online.
If you follow the suggestions made above, you will receive hundreds of copies of music a year. It would be foolish to keep every copy of music. The sheer bulk of it becomes a burden and you will not be interested in studying or performing all of it. Filing the copies in a cabinet does nothing to aid you in future searches for literature. Six months (or years) later you will have to sort through each file, copy by copy, to find music that you wish to perform. This duplication of effort is too costly in terms of time and energy, and is a contributing factor toward poor planning on the part of some directors.
The procedure that follows is one based on some years of use and was found to be practical, thorough, and useful for future reference.
It is much easier to have the information you desire in a card file or in a computer program than to look at all of the reference copies. The card, or its computer counterpart contains all of the information you desire for the moment, is portable, and can be taken from home to the office, etc., and will actually stimulate you to better examination of the music the first time. Later, for example, when you want to develop a group of four Renaissance motets for a Lenten season concert, you can do a quick card search, pull the cards on these pieces, know the approximate length of the work, the voicing, and the difficulty level as you have determined it. You may choose eight or ten possibilities and then examine the actual music for these pieces and choose the four that you wish to perform. The card may look like the one printed in the figure below or vary from it to suit your personal desires.
Complete a card only on the pieces that you consider worthy of future use. In addition to general choral works, these may include seasonal pieces, specific occasion works, and several pieces placed in a special category—perform as soon as possible.
The figure below is a sample of the manner in which a card may be completed on a specific choral work.
Your comments need to be specific enough to remind you of the qualities of that particular work. It is also best if you record your impressions of the piece ("very well written," "one of the best settings of this text I have seen," "the advanced choir will like this one") and your indications of specific performance use ("would work well at the end of a group," or "good opener"). Remember that the comments you write must be those that will best recall the work to your mind when you review the card.
The cards can be filed in alphabetical order by title or by composer. Filing by composer has the advantage of a more chronological ordering without actually formalizing it as such. You will recognize Victoria as Renaissance, for instance, but O ,MAGNUM MYSTERIUM has been set by many composers. Filing by musical period is usually not as good because the lines separating the periods are not as clear.
The remainder of this chapter consists of criteria on which the judgments of selection of repertoire can be based. Once a director becomes accustomed to applying these criteria to each new piece he views, the process will become automatic and time-saving. In addition, it will enable him to choose music that is most appropriate for his ensembles.
Do the overall characteristics indicate that the piece is within the performance realm of your ensemble? Is it technically within the grasp of your singers? There are many fine pieces that technically lie outside the grasp of many choirs. The notes may be so difficult to learn that the choir will never be able to get beyond this initial stage with the piece.
Can your choir achieve the choral sonority necessary for a musical performance of the work? There are many works whose technical demands place them within the reach of high school singers, but whose artistic merits also warrant performances by college, university, and professional choirs. Although high school students will not have the richness of tone that maturity and advance training brings, they can have a musicality and precision that excellent performances anywhere will have.
The following guide to vocal ranges indicates the normal limits of high school singers. These ranges may appear to be quite conservative, but this author has found that notes that exceed these range limits often cause singers to breach a good choral tone and create ensemble difficulties. One will find that, when a piece of music is very close to fitting within these limits, the overall sound of the choir is considerably better than when this is not the case. Choirs will always sound best when the notes they are asked to sing fall comfortably within the capabilities of the singers.
This does not mean that all selections must be tied to these limits, but that most of the singing should fall into these categories.
Three examples in which all the parts remain within the above limits are: Cantate Domino, Hassler, (Bourne), Psallite, Praetorius (Bourne) and numerous others.
If the ranges do exceed these limits it is important to note how often it happens and the manner in which these extreme notes are approached. It is also important to observe what vowel is sung on these extreme notes. When an extremely high note, for example, occurs on an "oo" vowel, it can pinch the tone and be difficult to sing with any real quality.
Are these extreme notes exposed or firmly supported by the rest of the choir? What volume level is indicated? For instance, a high B-flat for the sopranos at a pianissimo level, unsupported by the rest of the choir, has the possibility of being a disastrous moment.
Are the extreme ranges reached in several or all parts at once? When this is the case, young, immature voices are rarely able to overcome this obstacle and fulfill the musical expectation of the work.
Is the tessitura high in any part (particularly the tenor) or low in any part (particularly the alto) ? If either of the above is the case, can other voices be added to the part without destroying the choral sonority or damaging voices?
Finally, is the piece possible to perform except for one part, which is just too high or too low? Do not be trapped into a poor performance by rationalizing that the strong parts will cover the inadequacies of the one in question, or that maybe your singers can handle it after all. Instead, continue to look for repertoire that will come closer to fitting the capabilities of your ensemble.
It is important for you as the potential conductor to appraise the musical content of each composition. It will be necessary to examine the harmonic and melodic flow, the rhythmic life, the part writing, and the composer's treatment of the text.
First, observe the scope of the work. In a preliminary examination determine the style in which the work was written and its overall form. In a shorter work, this is usually not difficult. When examining a longer work, some grasp of the overall form and an indication of the number and type of movements will be sufficient.
If after looking at the musical characteristics of the work, you are still interested, look more carefully at the text. Because choral music is literally text- tied, it would have been impossible to ignore it before this point anyway. Now however, you should examine it closely and consider the following points.
1. Is it worthy of being set to music? There are many poems that read very well and are quite meaningful but either do not lend themselves to being set to music or, occasionally, are so complete in themselves that a musical setting is superfluous and meaningless. At the same time there are certain pieces of prose or poetry that seem to be waiting
for the "right" composer. Because of a composer's style of writing, certain types of texts seem to be more desirable for him to set than others.
2. Has the composer done justice to the text? If the composer has achieved an artistic setting, the text will seem to be carried along by the music. If he has not, the joining of the text to the music will seem forced, laborious, or commonplace. Examine the setting carefully to determine if the composer has followed the normal accents of the text. When the composer has not followed the normal stress,and there will be times when this occurs, be certain that the result is artistic and satisfying.
3. Is the text suitable for performance by specific choirs, such as high school students. or chuch choirs? If, for high school choirs, be certain that it is the type of text that high school age students will understand and be able to artistically project.
4. If the text is a translation, is the translation so different metrically that it no longer fits the original music? Are obvious musical stresses now placed on unimportant words or even on unaccented syllables? When this is the case, the work is better left alone, unless you have access to a translation that will enhance the original score.
5. Has the underlay of the text in each part been done with care regarding the syllabic stress?
Composers will often place fragments of the text in several voices while one part carries the entire text. It is important that this be examined also, to determine that such fragmentation enhances the setting and aids in the ultimate expression of the text. An example of the successful use of text fragmentation is presented in figure 7.3.
Does each part "sing well"? Sing each part, at this point, if not through the entire piece, at least through several sections of the piece and examine all of the part writing. While you are doing this, you can observe and mark those intervals and problems of range that are most difficult to sing. If you encounter difficulty you can be sure that your singers will also have trouble with them. Later, in a rehearsal analysis you should do a detailed study of each part and mark all points of possible difficulties and work out solutions prior to rehearsals, although you want to be adaptivein the rehearsal to be ready to address problems spontaneously.
It should be mentioned that some avant-garde works may not contain melodic passages in a traditional sense. Each piece will still have a structural quality about it that is apparent or, at least, that can be ascertained. A conductor must still examine each voice part carefully, because good part writing is necessary to any good choral composition.
As you observe the rhythmic life of the piece you may note patterns or other rhythmic uses that appear to be a foremost quality of the piece. You can also note any complications that are caused by the rhythm. Most choirs falter first rhythmically rather than melodically when reading a new score. Rhythmic complexity will cause more problems than melodic intervals and will plague a director longer in rehearsals.
If the work contains shifting meters, try to determine if the composer has chosen the most direct and simplified meter changes that best convey the meaning of the work. You may now wish to make some preliminary notations on the score for your future study regarding the conducting patterns you will
want to use. In many contemporary compositions with shifting meters and tempos, a conductor will not necessarily want to conduct the number of beats in a measure as indicated in the time signature. The composer may indicate an ordering of rhythmic relationships in the measure that will also alter the type of gestures the conductor will use, as in REJOICE IN THE LAMB by Benjamin Britten. It is good to make some initial observations now that will later be reviewed as you study the work in greater detail. A concern now regarding the conducting problems of the piece will also aid you in making a better initial review of the composition.
The harmonic language of a composer is due, in part, to his training, cultural heritage, and personal preference. Some contemporary composers are most comfortable when composing within the bounds of tonality, while others are equally as comfortable outside those bounds. There is no reason to doubt the validity of either as long as the results are satisfying musically.
It is important to determine the harmonic language of each composition you examine. This is not particularly difficult with music prior to the twentieth century. Examine twentieth-century works closely, checking to see that the composer remains consistently within a particular idiom. Ludwig Lenel's choral setting of the chorale, Christ Is Arisen (Concordia Publishing House), is an excellent example of a selection conceived carefully within a particular harmonic idiom that remains true to that idiom throughout the work.
The harmonic rhythm of a work is essential to its successful performance. It should be logically conceived and proceed naturally within that structure.
The harmonic progressions of a piece are vitally important to its musical flow and ultimately to its performance. Consequently, it is necessary to study the harmony during the first review of a work. Ask yourself the following questions. Do the harmonies proceed naturally or do they seem forced and strained? Has the composer resorted to the use of any musical cliches? Does the composer's use of harmony enhance the setting of the text? All of these questions need to be answered in the initial examination of the score. It is also true that a later and more thorough review may find a work to be lacking in some respect, which was not revealed at first inspection.
Does the piece have sufficient quality to withstand a long period of intense rehearsal? Any choral ensemble must spend a certain amount of time with any work in order to achieve a musical performance of the piece. This amount of time will obviously vary depending on the situation. If the choir becomes weary of the music before performance, the spontaneity that good performances enjoy will be impossible. Norman Dello Joio's A JUBILANT SONG, for example, contains both easy and difficult sections, and bears up well during the rehearsals necessary to successfully perform the work.
If the work is a relatively simple piece that has artistic value, such as M. Praetorius' PSALLITE, can you bring the piece through rehearsals in small doses to allow your choir to learn it and not tire of it?
Can the piece be memorized without undue stress? If not, can your choir use music in performance without so tying themselves to it that musicality and precision are impossible? As a rule of thumb, the more amateur an ensemble, the less able they are to use music without gluing their eyes to the score. When possible, memorization will help considerably toward giving better performances.
If the piece is an arrangement, is it arranged in a manner that complements the original intent of the song? Often folk songs are altered by the arranger. When adapted in this manner, some songs are made more appealing than the original. Michael Czajkowski's arrangements of Shaker hymns (THREE SHAKER SONGS—G. Schirmer) are examples of excellent arrangements. The new harmonies provided for the Shaker tunes enhance the melodies and establish a sturdy, distinctive character for the pieces. Some arrangements or adaptations, however, destroy the initial flavor of the original and, generally, these settings are better left unperformed.
There are many choral arrangements of folk songs, including spirituals, that are overarranged. These are arrangements in which the melody has not been altered, but the choral setting is often complex. The simple beauty of folk music can well be lost in a multitude of parts in a setting that has been overarranged.