Imagine you are at the dress rehearsal of your choirs’ performance. Perhaps, you have prepared a choral/orchestral work, and as your colleague conducts, you are in the audience listening. Since you are not conducting, you have the opportunity to listen, really listen to the choir. As you are listening, ask yourself: at this moment in time, what am I able to fix or improve upon prior to the performance? The answer is: practically nothing. As choir and orchestra work out balance, ensemble, articulation, and diction issues, and try to solidify a coherent artistic interpretation, the mistakes you “let go” to this point will, in all likelihood be there in the performance. And, if you’ve waited until this point to inspire “musicality” or the choirs’ connection to music and text, I am sorry to say that you have waited too long.
Choirs repeat in performance what they do most often in rehearsal. Good choral pedagogy includes the separation and integration of both the technical and expressive aspects of the music. If you desire an expressive and musical performance, it is imperative that you rehearse musically from the very beginning of the rehearsal process. The session today will focus on the specific ways that teaching the expressive elements of music – including but not limited to phrase shape and direction, word stress and accentuation, and structure and musical form, at the beginning of the rehearsal process can complement the music learning process and result in better, more engaging musical performances.
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