Humor frees you, allowing you to make mistakes without losing face.
If you need to maintain Zeus-like status in front of your choir, you will fail, I believe. No offense intended, but you are not Zeus. At some point, you will miss a cue, not hear a wrong note in the Alto II line, refer to the wrong measure number, etc. Despite your thorough preparation, something will happen to reveal your humanity.
A healthier approach would be for me to acknowledge my mistake, joke about it, and move on. “Wow, altos, that cue was meant for the tenors, but you were singing so convincingly, I
had to cue you again! Let’s take it again from page five. Tenors, wave at me when it’s time for me to cue you!” The quality of the joke is irrelevant. The singers saw your mistake. You’ve
made light of it in an appropriate way. Your choir realizes you can own up to it and everyone can move forward.
A secondary benefit is that once the choir becomes aware of your mistake and considers how it could have performed well in spite of the error—your highly-motivated students think in
this manner, the choir becomes more aware of the many things you do well. When you acknowledge that you messed up on one of, say, 200 cues, the singers realize you are batting 199 for 200. That’s a fine percentage. Everyone, you included, grew from your handling the situation with humor.
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Ronald Richard Duquette says