Done and dusted: day three

The final day of a winter intensive is always worth sticking around to see.  It's always the day with the least vocal demonstrating from the conductor, which is just as well because things were a bit rough this morning. I probably won't have much of a voice to sing with for the next day or two.

Here's the statistics.  One recording session program, comprising five songs.  One half of a concert program, another six songs.  In addition, most of the year's remaining curriculum was taught, with nearly all the worksheets completed.  At the end of the day the choir performed three songs, drawing on material from both programs.

The transformation in the ensemble was clearly audible from the middle of the choir's warm up.  One of my standard tricks is to write up a treble stave and put a semibreve on the G line.  No prompting here, all the choristers are to do is try to remember what part of the voice that note falls in and sing it to a good ah.  Once the note comes into focus you can check it against the piano, whereupon you discover how good your choristers pitch memory is.  On Monday there were around as many pitches as there were people in the room.  Yesterday they were a tritone above.  Today they were a semitone below.  If we were to have had a fourth day, the group would probably have been within closer sight of the note.

Another aspect of the discipline for me was the extent to which I had to keep my conducting gestures under tight control.  The majority of last week's choristers rehearse with me every week, so they are used to following the logic of my gestures.  From the first day it was possible to be a bit freer and work with broader brushstrokes.  This week I was working with choristers where the largest groups came from centres where I might have conducted the level 2 singers at a concert in May, but otherwise the students have never worked with me.  This week's group found it a bit challenging to work out the relationship between the size of gesture and dynamics.  Conducting was a bit more like painting a detailed watercolour.  A bit of wash here and there, but all the rest was fine brushstrokes.  Keeping that up for around six hours a day is quite draining: I came home each day feeling very tired.

The end of the day was bright and happy.  Many parents wanted to visit and say how much positive feedback they had heard from their children.  Clearing the foyer took considerably longer than the scheduled fifteen minutes.

The best response from the whole workshop was at the end of today.  Three choristers made a special effort to say to me how much they had enjoyed the program, and to thank me for working with them.  What can one say?  It'd be pretty dull attempting this work without the choristers!