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Is it a collaboration or a dictatorship?

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One of the phrases that I frequently use in my technology presentations is this:
 
“We are masters of collaboration in the rehearsal hall, but novices when it comes to working together as a profession.”
 
I use that phrase as a way of bringing attention to the need for our choral profession to bond together and develop group efforts like ChoralNet and yet-to-be-fully-realized ChoralPedia.  
 
I saw this phrase on a T-shirt today:
 
“A team effort is a lot of people doing what I say.”
 
Someone I greatly respect suggested that we choral directors aren’t collaborators at all – that we are used to people doing what we say (command, order, etc.) and that is why we have problems working together.
 
Which is it  – are we dictators or collaborators?

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  1. Philip:  I’m afraid you’re drawing a false dichotomy.  I don’t think anyone–certainly not anyone in our jobs–can be successful being just one thing or the other.  But just to break away briefly from the rehearsal hall, here’s a couple of other thoughts.
     
    CAN a musical ensemble be a pure collaboration?  Surprisingly, yes, it can.  But I think there’s a size limit.  Chanticleer is a pretty good example at 12 singers, the Kings Singers perhaps an even better one at half the size.  My own quartet, The Four Saints, was very much a collaboration for just short of 20 years.  On the instrumental side, any string quartet, string trio, or jazz combo is a collaboration of equals, with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra possible on the largest side.  But a jazz big band is a collaboration, which may have a leader but does not have a conductor telling people how to do their jobs.
     
    But even a collaboration has its needs and its rules:  form follows funciton.  The participants HAVE TO GET ALONG, and have to function well together.  In my quartet ideas could come from anyone, but they could (and WERE!) also be modified in rehearsal until everyone agreed on the result.  That simply takes more time–sometimes a LOT more time!–than having one person making decisions.  We took turns day by day setting up our play lists, so that one person’s favorites didn’t take over the programming.  But we did split up the necessary jobs.  One person was the business contact; I was the chief arranger; another person was our copyist; and the fourth was our equipment manager.  Even in Chanticleer, Joe was the boss even though he didn’t go on tour with the group, but on the road they were truly collaborative within his excellent programming concepts.  We had a very fine professional collaborative string quartet in residence here, until one member decided that he needed to be the dictator, and that was the end of that quartet.
     
    Another thought.  When my daughter was on the Math faculty here, she went to one faculty meeting and vowed never to go to another.  “Those people are NASTY to each other,” is what she said.  That doesn’t happen on our music faculty, and I think it’s because we’re all specialists in certain ways, hired for our special expertise, and we aren’t really competing with one another.  That makes faculty collaboration both nautral and relatively smooth.  At a much larger Music School, of course, the opposite might be true, since there will be faculties whose members naturally DO compete with one another.
     
    But we have all grown up making ensemble music, right?  And that is and always will be a group effort.  So even when we go for the advanced education and apply for the jobs in which decision-making is an understood part of the job, we all have that background.  My late wife and I are pretty good examples.  When she was the leader on a program, I followed her lead, no question.  When I was the leader, she followed mine.  And when someone else was leader, we followed that person’s lead.  It’s called professionalism.
     
    And finally, it should be obvious that therre are different levels–perhaps infinite levels!–of both dictatorship and collaboration.  I have directed some groups in which had I not made the decisions and stuck with them, the ensemble could not have functioned.  I have directed others in which I warmly accepted and even asked for suggestions and opinions before finally making the necessary decision.  The only completely untenable situation would be one in which responsibility–which is ALWAYS present–does not carry with it the authority to make the necessary decisions.  Second guessing yourself or second guessing someone else whose job it is to make decisions really is self defeating.
     
    I have known conductors for whom it’s either “my way or the highway.”  I’ve known others who were less rigid and a lot more fun to work with.  I try to combine the two as appropriate, and to be smart enough to recognize the difference.  When I came to this school to take over a very fine show ensemble, its former director had been a dictator, and I did lose some good people that first semester because I was NOT.  But I set out to develop new talent and succeeded at it pretty well, because guess what, the talent was there all the time, even though it hadn’t fit my predecesor’s concept of what he was looking for.
     
    All the best,
    John

  2. I am a little bit of both–a “bossy” big sister and someone who really values other opinions.  I now conduct a chamber choir among whose members include three other choir directors, a general music teacher and an former Marine drill instructer so I better collaborate!  With my singers, I try to tap into their expertises—two are much better than I with German diction and another had a minor in sung Latin when she went to grad school–it would be silly  not to use them.  However, when it comes to the stick, I rule and they do not question me–the buck stops with me as to repertoire (usually) and the world’s view of the Midwest Motet Society.
     
    I also would agree that we as a group–choral directors–don’t play well together.  I always try to work with others but……is it territory? Is it jealousy? Is it something else?  In order to further our art, we HAVE to cooperate and collaborate with each other.
     
    Tim Sharp has been speaking of collaborating with other art forms—I am probably the poster child, since I was a ballet dancer (and the daughter of a ballet and tap dancer and a coloratura soprano so my existance was a collabortation between art forms!)and have never been afraid to reach out to others in the performing arts.  Why can’t we take that same attitude and apply it to ourselves?
     
    I have had a dream of getting together with local choir directors and do just as Liz has done–sing together.  I think it would be good for our choirs to see –we’re people and we sing, too, not just wave our hands with sticks.
     
    Marie

  3. I certainly think Liz is on the right track.  We really must master two ways of doing business:
    (1) leadership and decision making in the rehearsal and concert […that’s our real job, right? Professional problem-solver and inspirational leader) ;
    (2) cooperative collaboration across the broad spectrum of the choral world for purposes of expanding and nurturing new and old literature, rehearsal techniques, programming ideas, performance opportunities and other ways of enhancing the choral experience for our choristers.
     
    tim b

  4. Good question, Philip.
     
    I suspect the issue is about the nature of the different roles. Every person who takes on the commanding role when they work as a director most likely also has plenty of experience in both following other directors and working more interactively in chamber music type scenarios.  But there may not be such established norms of interaction between people in the directing role working with each other rather than with the people they usually direct.
     
    Also – the relationships we forge in these various musical roles are built on a substrate of musical activity. We work together within the music, and the relationships we build there carry on in our verbal interactions. Directors don’t have obvious opportunities to make music together as directors, which may make smooth verbal interactions harder to develop. My region of the Association of British Choral Directors often ends our AGM by singing together – though I’m now wondering if the meetings would be more productive if we started that way instead!
     
    liz

  5. As a choral director working with a group of singers I have a good reason to collaborate. I’m not sure what my reason for collaborating with other choral directors would be. What are we working towards?
     
    In my own small world (of Natural Voice Practitioners) there is enormous support, generosity, mutual admiration, willingness to help (with repertoire, song information, problems dealing with choirs, etc.), but not that much direct collaboration.
     
    I don’t think we have problems working together (at least not with the choral directors I know!), but perhaps you could expand, Philip, and suggest kinds of projects that a group of directors might truly collaborate on?
     
    Chris Rowbury

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