I can hardly believe it, but two incredible men and musicians, Mel Butler (St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral) and James Savage (St. James Catholic Cathedral) are both retiring at the same time. I'd know Mel's was coming for a while, but hadn't known Jim's plans. Both have had enormous "influence for good" in their respective denominations and cathedrals and have also been a strong influence in music in general (and choral music in particular) in the Northwest and beyond.
They have both been friends with a positive influence on me as well. I can't thank them enough.
I wish them the very best as they transition to another phase of life.
This article gives a good background for those who don't know them.
Totally amazing address by Pope Francis to the Vatican Curia–appropriate not only to Catholics or even to those who are religious, but to all organizations and individuals:
Pope Francis: a Curia that is outdated, sclerotic or indifferent to others is an ailing body
Vatican City, 22 December 2014 (VIS) –
This morning in the Clementine Hall the Holy Father held his annual
meeting with the Roman Curia to exchange Christmas greetings with the
members of its component dicasteries, councils, offices, tribunals and
commissions. “It is good to think of the Roman Curia as a small model of
the Church, that is, a body that seeks, seriously and on a daily basis,
to be more alive, healthier, more harmonious and more united in itself
and with Christ”.
“The Curia is always
required to better itself and to grow in communion, sanctity and wisdom
to fully accomplish its mission. However, like any body, it is exposed
to sickness, malfunction and infirmity. … I would like to mention some
of these illnesses that we encounter most frequently in our life in the
Curia. They are illnesses and temptations that weaken our service to the
Lord”, continued the Pontiff, who after inviting all those present to
an examination of conscience to prepare themselves for Christmas, listed
the most common Curial ailments:
The
first is “the sickness of considering oneself 'immortal', 'immune' or
'indispensable', neglecting the necessary and habitual controls. A Curia
that is not self-critical, that does not stay up-to-date, that does not
seek to better itself, is an ailing body. … It is the sickness of the
rich fool who thinks he will live for all eternity, and of those who
transform themselves into masters and believe themselves superior to
others, rather than at their service”.
The
second is “'Martha-ism', or excessive industriousness; the sickness of
those who immerse themselves in work, inevitably neglecting 'the better
part' of sitting at Jesus' feet. Therefore, Jesus required his disciples
to rest a little, as neglecting the necessary rest leads to stress and
agitation. Rest, once one who has brought his or her mission to a close,
is a necessary duty and must be taken seriously: in spending a little
time with relatives and respecting the holidays as a time for spiritual
and physical replenishment, it is necessary to learn the teaching of
Ecclesiastes, that 'there is a time for everything'”.
Then
there is “the sickness of mental and spiritual hardening: that of those
who, along the way, lose their inner serenity, vivacity and boldness
and conceal themselves behind paper, becoming working machines rather
than men of God. … It is dangerous to lose the human sensibility
necessary to be able to weep with those who weep and to rejoice with
those who rejoice! It is the sickness of those who lose those sentiments
that were present in Jesus Christ”.
“The
ailment of excessive planning and functionalism: this is when the
apostle plans everything in detail and believes that, by perfect
planning things effectively progress, thus becoming a sort of
accountant. … One falls prey to this sickness because it is easier and
more convenient to settle into static and unchanging positions. Indeed,
the Church shows herself to be faithful to the Holy Spirit to the extent
that she does not seek to regulate or domesticate it. The Spirit is
freshness, imagination and innovation”.
The
“sickness of poor coordination develops when the communion between
members is lost, and the body loses its harmonious functionality and its
temperance, becoming an orchestra of cacophony because the members do
not collaborate and do not work with a spirit of communion or as a
team”.
“Spiritual Alzheimer's disease,
or rather forgetfulness of the history of Salvation, of the personal
history with the Lord, of the 'first love': this is a progressive
decline of spiritual faculties, that over a period of time causes
serious handicaps, making one incapable of carrying out certain
activities autonomously, living in a state of absolute dependence on
one's own often imaginary views. We see this is those who have lost
their recollection of their encounter with the Lord … in those who build
walls around themselves and who increasingly transform into slaves to
the idols they have sculpted with their own hands”.
“The
ailment of rivalry and vainglory: when appearances, the colour of one's
robes, insignia and honours become the most important aim in life. … It
is the disorder that leads us to become false men and women, living a
false 'mysticism' and a false 'quietism'”.
Then
there is “existential schizophrenia: the sickness of those who live a
double life, fruit of the hypocrisy typical of the mediocre and the
progressive spiritual emptiness that cannot be filled by degrees or
academic honours. This ailment particularly afflicts those who,
abandoning pastoral service, limit themselves to bureaucratic matters,
thus losing contact with reality and with real people. They create a
parallel world of their own, where they set aside everything they teach
with severity to others and live a hidden, often dissolute life”.
The
sickness of “chatter, grumbling and gossip: this is a serious illness
that begins simply, often just in the form of having a chat, and takes
people over, turning them into sowers of discord, like Satan, and in
many cases cold-blooded murderers of the reputations of their colleagues
and brethren. It is the sickness of the cowardly who, not having the
courage to speak directly to the people involved, instead speak behind
their backs”.
“The sickness of
deifying leaders is typical of those who court their superiors, with the
hope of receiving their benevolence. They are victims of careerism and
opportunism, honouring people rather than God. They are people who
experience service thinking only of what they might obtain and not of
what they should give. They are mean, unhappy and inspired only by their
fatal selfishness”.
“The disease of
indifference towards others arises when each person thinks only of
himself, and loses the sincerity and warmth of personal relationships.
When the most expert does not put his knowledge to the service of less
expert colleagues; when out of jealousy … one experiences joy in seeing
another person instead of lifting him up or encouraging him”.
“The
illness of the funereal face: or rather, that of the gruff and the
grim, those who believe that in order to be serious it is necessary to
paint their faces with melancholy and severity, and to treat others –
especially those they consider inferior – with rigidity, hardness and
arrogance. In reality, theatrical severity and sterile pessimism are
often symptoms of fear and insecurity”.
“The
disease of accumulation: when the apostle seeks to fill an existential
emptiness of the heart by accumulating material goods, not out of
necessity but simply to feel secure. … Accumulation only burdens and
inexorably slows down our progress”.
“The
ailment of closed circles: when belonging to a group becomes stronger
than belonging to the Body and, in some situations, to Christ Himself.
This sickness too may start from good intentions but, as time passes,
enslaves members and becomes a 'cancer' that threatens the harmony of
the Body and causes a great deal of harm – scandals – especially to our
littlest brothers”.
Then, there is the
“disease of worldly profit and exhibitionism: when the apostle
transforms his service into power, and his power into goods to obtain
worldly profits or more power. This is the disease of those who seek
insatiably to multiply their power and are therefore capable of
slandering, defaming and discrediting others, even in newspapers and
magazines, naturally in order to brag and to show they are more capable
than others”.
After listing these
ailments, Pope Francis continued, “We are therefore required, at this
Christmas time and in all the time of our service and our existence – to
live 'speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into
him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and
held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part
is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in
love'”.
“I once read that priests are
like aeroplanes: they only make the news when they crash, but there are
many that fly. Many criticise them and few pray for them”, he concluded.
“It is a very nice phrase, but also very true, as it expresses the
importance and the delicacy of our priestly service, and how much harm
just one priest who falls may cause to the whole body of the Church”.
More from Daniel Coyle: Tip# 13 "Find the Sweet Spot." Once again, I recommend Coyle's book highly.
For this tip, Coyle speaks of finding "a place, right on the edge
of your ability, where you learn best and fastest. It's called the sweet
spot."
He then gives hints on finding that "sweet spot" of learning by
comparing the "comfort zone," where the sensations are, "Ease,
effortlessness. You're working, but not reaching or struggling," to the
sweet spot where the sensations are of, "frustration, difficulty,
alertness to errors. You're fully engaged in an intense struggle—as if
you're stretching with all your might for a nearly unreachable goal,
brushing it with your fingertips, then reaching again." And finally, to
what he calls the "survival zone," where the sensations are "confusion,
desperation. You're overmatched: scrambling, thrashing, and guessing.
You guess right sometimes, but it's mostly luck."
Coyle gives the example of a 13 year old clarinetist, part of an
Australian study, who in a particular practice session, suddenly focuses
intensely on her mistakes, figuring them out, and fixing them. The
author of the study noted that the girl "learned more in that span of
minutes than she would have learned in an entire month practicing her
normal way, in which she played songs straight through, ignoring any
mistakes."
This is analogous to my prior discussions of "drill" versus
"scrimmage" (borrowed from the studies of John Wooden's
teaching/coaching techniques), which you can find in this post, this one, and here.
It's our job to try to keep the choir as often as possible at that
sweet spot, where they're having to stretch hard to accomplish something
(learn a difficult passage, rhythm, vocal skill, etc.). This way, their
learning will be at the optimum speed. That isn't all we need to do, of
course, since we need to run through passages or pieces as well
("scrimmage"), but you can read about that in the other posts.
But our choice of repertoire is also something that needs to push
our ensembles beyond their comfort zone. Finding the balance of some
music that they can achieve more easily, but some that is almost beyond their abilities (but not pushing them into the "survival zone") is our challenge as a conductor. I've posted earlier
about choosing repertoire, and often have tried to find one piece
(often contemporary) that will push my students in ways they've never
been pushed before. Since I've been involved with Swedish music, that's
provided some of this music for my choirs (in recent years with the
University Singers at UNT, Sven-David Sandström's Agnus Dei and Thomas
Jennefelt's O Domine). But the specifics can and must vary,
depending on the level of your choir—children, middle school, high
school, college, or perhaps a program you've built versus a poor one
you've just taken over—it's our job to find something that will
s-t-r-e-t-c-h our choir's abilities. I've found it's often just that
piece that the choir struggles with at first, perhaps dislikes, that
they like best by the time they perform it. And it's those pieces that
push your choir's abilities ahead faster and further than any others.
This is my last post before the holidays—have a wonderful break—and I'll "see" you again in January.
More from Daniel Coyle: Tip#11 "Don't Fall for the Prodigy Myth."
Coyle makes the point that prodigies (talent expressed at an early
age) aren't really predictors of ultimate success. He gives some
examples:
Many top performers are overlooked early on, then grow quietly into
stars. This list includes Michael Jordan (cut from his high school
varsity team as a sophomore), Charles Darwin (considered slow and
ordinary by teachers), Walt Disney (fired from an early job because he
"lacked imagination"), Albert Einstein, Louis Pasteur, Paul Gaugin,
Thomas Edison, Leo Tolstoy, Fred Astaire, Winston Churchill, Lucille
Ball, and so on.
He then mentions Carol Dweck, whose research I profile here and here.
Her work involves two mindsets, one that is fixed and where the
individual assumes that their talent is fixed (and therefore failure is not
a good thing); and one that she calls the growth mindset, where growth
(and the failures that go with the attempts to do things one can't yet
do well) is valued.
He also speaks of various sports "talent hotbeds," where they are, "not built on identifying talent, but constructing it."
While this feeds into our own skill building (and our willingness to explore things we don't
yet do well and accept failure as a way to learn new things), I think
it goes more to the development of our own singers'/students' skills.
It tells us that we must be careful not to assume too much from the
current level of some of our students. We don't really know who will
develop and who won't. It's our job to do everything we can to build the
skills of each and every student. Coyle quotes Anson Dorrance, head
coach of the University of North Carolina women's soccer team, who's led
his team to 21 championship wins: "One of the most unfortunate things I
see when identifying youth players is the girl who is told over the
years how great she is. By the time she's a high school freshman, she
starts to believe it. By her senior year, she's fizzled out. Then
there's her counterpart: a girl waiting in the wings, who quietly and
with determination decides she's going to make something of herself.
Invariably, this humble, hard-working girl is the one who becomes the
real player."
What does that tell us about how we treat our young singers?
More from Daniel Coyle: Tip#10 “Honor the Hard Skills"
From Coyle: "As you probably recognize, most talents are not
exclusively hard skills or soft skills, but rather a combination of the
two. For example, think of a violinist's precise finger placement to
play a series of notes (a hard skill) and her ability to interpret the
emotion of a song (a soft skill). . . The point of this tip is simple:
Prioritize the hard skills because in the long run they're more
important to your talent."
This goes to the challenge of building hard skills—whether in
yourself or in your singers—while still making progress in the creative
soft skills. Coyle's saying to prioritize the hard skills . . . but how
do you do this?
We can relate it to research on the imagined ability of the brain
to multi-task. I say "imagined," because all recent research shows that
there is no such thing as multi-tasking, but that your brain has to
switch back and forth between tasks. And that switching is not
efficient. There's even a recent study that suggests that multi-tasking can damage the abilties of the brain!
So, the skills we have to teach our singers have to be prioritized: vocal skills, ensemble skills, musicianship, etc.
This is a challenge, because our groups also have to perform . . .
and they also need to learn how to sing musically and creatively. We
can't work exclusively on exercises and hard skills.
This was perhaps possible in an earlier era—for example, the
stories (probably exaggerated, of course!) that the famous voice teacher
Porpora had the singer Caffarelli train on a single page of vocalises
(and nothing else) for five years, then saying, "Go young man. You have
nothing more to learn. You are now the greatest singer of Italy and the
world."
And in a contemporary version of this noted by Coyle, "At Sparktak,
the Moscow tennis club, there is a rule that young players must wait
years before entering competitive tournaments. 'Technique is
everything,' said a coach, Larisa Preobrazhenskaya. 'If you begin
playing without technique, it is big mistake.'"
So, what do we do? I think we have to follow the research about
"multi-tasking." In other words, there's no such thing as being able to
practice both soft and hard skills at the same time. But we can alternate work that allows both (and not in such a quick way as to pretend to multi-task and do both at once).
I've written before about drilling a particular passage, for
accurate pitches, rhythms, vowel, intonation, etc. (some of which may
well have to be isolated one element at a time), but then after that
(see my various John Wooden posts about drill),
work with the choir on singing that passage musically and expressively.
Or being able to conduct them with freedom of tempo (rubato) or
different phrase shapes and dynamics, since the singers are now
confident enough to be able to watch and respond. Some of this can be
practiced fairly soon—after even a few repetitions in some passages, the
choir can master enough of the music necessary to focus on musicality.
And also important is that work on basics (most likely through
vocalises or other exercises) is something even an advanced choir needs.
Again from Coyle: "The cellist Yo-Yo Ma spends the first minutes of
every practice playing single notes on his cello. The NFL quarterback
Peyton Manning spends the first segment of every practice doing basic
footwork drills—the kind they teach twelve-year-olds."
This means finding ways to carefully balance basic work on hard
skills (some of which are basics which need continual repetition, no
matter what the level of the choir) and working on the soft, creative
skills of musicality and projecting the emotion the composer attempts to
express.
It means re-thinking our rehearsal technique. It means rehearsing
with an eye towards balancing the absolutely important building of hard
skills (see my earlier post
relating to Robert Shaw's techniques) and the need to build in
musicality early on as well. It's part of what makes what we do
endlessly fascinating. Rehearsing is craft, but the combination and
balance of techniques can also be art.
P.S. speaking of mentors, Robert Scandrett died on Tuesday—Bob was
another important mentor to me. You can find my response to his long and
meaningful life here.
An amazing musician and person, the study tour of England he planned
and led in 1975 changed my life in many ways—take a look, you won't
believe what we got to do, who we got to meet, and the performances we
heard.
As I mentioned in the previous post, Bob was an excellent pianist who was still working in the Bach Goldberg variations.
Here's a note he put up on Jeremy Denk's blog (Denk, a wonderful pianist, was awarded the MacArthur prize this past year) in 2009 about the Bach:
After a full life of college teaching and choral conducting, at age 83 I
needed to renew my contact with JSB. I was missing the intense
pleasure of preparing the Mass, Passions and cantatas, and although I
had not seriously practiced the piano since college I decided to climb
Mt. Everest and challenged myself to learn the Goldberg.
Listening to the Goldberg can never equal the experience of putting
this music into fingers, mind and soul. As amazing as the sacred choral
music is, it does not give a complete picture of that incredible mind
and spirit. And some of the Goldberg is surely sacred. Variation 25 and
15 would be at home in the Mass, and even #3, indulged at a slow tempo
is not unlike a cantata duet for two sopranos. But the humor, the robust
vitality, practically everything you can think of as being the realm of
music, from profound sadness to a sly sense of the showoff virtuoso, is
there. I think I know Bach more as a human being than was ever
possible without studying this piece.
I live just a short walk from the Lakeside School in Seattle, and so
of course have often heard you play. This unique possibility to hear
you as soloist and chamber music partner is one of the special
pleasures of this series. Your gifts are abundant, but I have
particularly enjoyed the energy and commitment of your ensemble playing.
Your last, intense glance at your fellow musicians before you begin is
symptomatic of what we can expect to hear. I am deeply disappointed
that you will not be playing the Goldberg, but perhaps another year? In
the meantime, I will enjoy your blogs.
Robert Scandrett died on Sunday of a heart valve failure. Bob was hugely influential to a large number of conductors and singers throughout the Northwest and beyond, and will be greatly missed.
Bob was a wonderful musician, extraordinary pianist, and someone whose interests were far broader than just music, from a wide range of literature and history to great food.
He had a great career with a long tenure at University Presbyterian Church in Seattle (building an unrivaled program at the time) followed by an equally long tenure at Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA, where he influenced multiple generations of students. His Ph.D. was in musicology and his dissertation was an edition of the many anthems of William Croft in multiple volumes (I remember looking through them when an undergrad at the University of Washington and asking Bob for a recommendation for some Croft anthems to perform—he generously gave me several editions to use). He later put this skill to good use in editing a number of works by Domenico Scarlatti for Carus Verlag. He conducted other church choirs (University Congregational after his retirement), community choruses (the Whatcom County Chorale), and the Seattle Symphony Chorus for 12 years (I was lucky enough to follow him there). He was an active pianist and I remember a wonderful performance of Die Winterreise at Western. In his later years he worked regularly on Bach's Goldberg Variations and did a recital of them last year (this I heard from Neil Lieurance, who was present). I'm sure I'm missing many other important things!
While I was never a student of Bob's, he was an enormously important model for me. His
musicianship, his love of music and immense knowledge (of many things,
not just music) were hugely influential.
As I've noted before, I was introduced to Bob by Neil Lieurance, who was my high school teacher and who was working on his master's at WWU after I graduated and was going to school at the University of Washington. Bob did a memorable series of summer choral workshops at Western in those days and I attended workshops led by Gregg Smith, Günter Graulich (who would own Carus Verlag), and Louis Halsey (his son, Simon—well known now for his connection as Simon Rattle's choral conductor in Birmingham and Berlin—would spend a year studying with Bob at WWU).
Because I'd made this connection, I was invited to go on a study tour
of England he organized in 1975. This was a watershed in so many ways—I've
posted about it on my blog previously in 14 different posts. I think you'll be astonished at the experiences we had and the people we met or concerts we heard: Roger Norrington (we met with him in his home and the rehearsals we observed were my introduction to the Monteverdi 1610 Vespers), Alfred Deller (we heard the Deller consort in a program and went to a reception at his home), Simon Preston (then at Christ Church College), Louis Halsey, David Munrow, composer John Gardner, Daniel Barenboim conducting the New Philharmonia Orchestra in (among other things) Mahler's Songs of a Wayfarer with Janet Baker, Solti conducting Die Frau ohne Schatten, Colin Davis conducting Cosi, Falstaff with Sir Geraint Evans in the title role, Death in Venice with Pears, Colerige-Taylor's Hiawatha's Wedding Feast and Purcell's Hail, Bright Cecilia at Aldeburgh with Pears, John Shirley-Quirk, Anthony Rolfe-Johnson, and Charles Brett (we also saw Britten riding in his open convertible with Pears and Imogen Holst after the concert); also part of the Aldeburgh Festival, but out of doors at a nearby ruined castle, Imogen Holst conducting her fathers E-flat Band Suite; a performance of the Britten War Requiem; meeting with the young Fitzwilliam String Quartet, who had a close relationship with Shostokovich and played his 15th string quartet for us; the young King's Singers at a festival at St. Alban's (along with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields in a baroque program, the English Chamber Orchestra, which did the Poulenc Concerto for Organ, Strings, and Timpani with Peter Hurford, and a recital by James Bowman with Robert Spencer on lute).
As you can imagine, this was an amazing and life-changing experience . . . and Bob organized all of it!
I also have to say that Kathryn and my wedding included Bob's setting of Psalm 91, for men's voices, organ and 2 horns—beautiful!
Bob and his wife Sandy are simply wonderful people as well—gracious and
welcoming in all ways. They've had a marvelous influence on so many
lives. We can all thank them for that and I certainly do.
In particular, my thoughts are with Sandy, who has to deal with the loss of her husband and partner of so many years.
More from Daniel Coyle: Tip#9 “To Build Soft Skills, Play Like a Skateboarder”
As Coyle says:
Soft skills catch our eye because they are beautiful. Picture the
soccer star Lionel Messi improvising his way to a brilliant goal, or
Jimi Hendrix blazing through a guitar solo, or Jon Stewart riffing
through a comic monologue. These talents appear magical and unique. In
fact they are the result of super-fast brain software recognizing
patterns and responding in just the right way.
While hard skills are better put together with measured precision,
soft skills are built by playing and exploring inside challenging,
ever-changing environments. These are places where you encounter
different obstacles and respond to them over and over, building the
network of sensitive wiring you need to read, recognize, and react. In
other words, to build soft skills you should behave less like a careful
carpenter and more like a skateboarder in a skateboard park: aggressive,
curious, and experimental, always seeking new ways to challenge
yourself.
After this, Coyle uses some great examples from Brazilian soccer
players, Chicago’s Second City improvisational comedy troupe, and the
(!) Brontë sisters to show how in different situations, flexibility and
creativity are developed. He then closes with:
When you practice a soft skill, focus on making a high number of
varied reps, and on getting clear feedback. Don’t worry too much about
making errors—the important thing is to explore. Soft skills are often
more fun to practice, but they’re also tougher because they demand that
you coach yourself. After each session, ask yourself, What worked? What
didn’t? And why?
As always, I highly recommend getting Coyle’s book yourself.
But the question is, how does this apply to a conductor? As recreative artists, where does our own creativity come in?
One is in learning how to be expressive and teaching your singers
the same. Of course we all bring our training and lifetime in music
(however long that is!) to our understanding of interpretation, whether
generally or specifically in understanding performance in various
periods, national styles, the particular style of an individual
composer, languages, poetry, expressive diction, vocal color, varied use
of vibrato, etc., etc. This is part of our never-ending learning
process, which also includes listening to great artists (not just great
choirs), whether singers or instrumentalists, or conductors of the past
or present (one of the great things about the wealth of recordings
available to us). This never-ending learning process is one of the
reasons I love what I do . . . no worries that I can learn it all—and I
should never get bored!
In your own preparation then, as you learn a particular piece of
music, besides the usual research about the music, composer, and text,
once you begin to really learn the piece, it’s time to experiment
(without worrying, as Coyle says, about errors) with different tempi
(and variation in tempi, ritardando/accelerando, and rubato), shapes of
phrases, colors, articulations, places to breathe, etc. I do this by
literally singing phrases myself, but also purely in my own internal
musical imagination (which is a great thing to develop—the ability to
imagine and hear the whole score: texture, voices, instruments, harmony,
dynamics, etc.). Sometimes it can help to isolate different elements
one at a time: experiment with articulation (legato, marcato, staccato
and everything in between), with vocal color (bright to dark), and so
on. With rubato, when is it appropriate, when not? How much rubato works
with the composition—or does too much rubato destroy the structure of
the music?
I’m having a great time with the Mozart Vesperae solennes de
Dominica, which I’m doing with my Collegium Singers right now. It’s the
much less known of the pair of Vespers settings Mozart wrote, and an
absolutely wonderful piece. But it’s music which needs careful work to
shape expressively: varied dynamics, articulations, attention to text
(both meaning and diction) and text accent (which does not always fall
on strong beats), length of final notes, and (of course) tempi. These
all feed into phrase shape, which I think of as the heart and soul of
expressive interpretation.
All of this experimentation gradually builds an interpretation. Now
does this finalize it? Of course not! The ensemble will affect what you
do—perhaps a tempo you’ve imagined simply doesn’t work. And the room
where you sing will also make its own contribution. When I tour with
choirs, the different rooms can make a big difference in tempi, in how
much time you take at the end of a section of music. Music is a live
art—it’s an interaction between you, the ensemble, room, and audience.
I’ll always remember a concert in the Stanford University Chapel with
the Choir of the West from PLU—and the great reaction of the choir to
the room after we cut off the first chord we sang! For that particular
performance I had to allow much more time at the end of sections and it
made an impact on my tempi, as well. But any different room will have
its own effect.
Another thing young conductors need is practice controlling what
the ensemble does with just gesture (unless you’ve decided its fine to
talk to your ensemble in performance!).
When rehearsing, even early in the process, particularly if you’re
drilling a phrase or section of the music, start varying what you do
(tempo, ritardando, dynamics) and show changes with your gesture,
expecting the singers to follow. This gives you many more reps in
learning how to control what the singers do with gesture alone. Don’t
wait until the dress rehearsal to experiment! Do it as soon as you
can—you can also explore your own creativity, exaggerate various things
(dynamics, tempo rubato, etc.) that you’d never want to do in a
performance.
But the idea is . . . find ways to practice your creativity as an interpretive artist!
This is a difficult choice, since I've been lucky to have some
wonderful teachers and mentors. For example, Neil Lieurance was an
influential teacher—without him I probably wouldn't have made a career
as a conductor. Neil died this past year at the too-young age of 70. I
wrote about him here.
But beyond his influence in HS, Neil immediately treated me like a
colleague after I graduated and began my undergraduate studies at the
University of Washington—I'd visit and he'd share whatever music and
recordings were interesting him. He followed my work with early
ensembles I conducted and was always willing to give advice. He was a
true mentor.
Rod Eichenberger, my undergraduate conducting teacher (although he
let me take part in the graduate conducting class as an undergrad), has
been another great teacher and mentor. I started hanging around his
office and listening to his conversations with the grad students around
my junior year (among them Bruce Browne and Larry Marsh) and he told me
if I'd file the large stacks of scores for him, I could keep any
duplicates. This not only gave me the beginning of my personal library
but a great overview of choral literature—if I filed a piece by
Hindemith, I'd look through the file to see what else Hindemith wrote
for chorus. And, like Neil, he remained a mentor long after I graduated
(to the current day, in fact). When I took the job at Pacific Lutheran
University, following Maurice Skones, he called and congratulated me,
but also said, "As someone who followed Charles Hirt at USC, I know
something about the challenges of following a legend. If you ever want
to call and talk, don't hesitate." This was a gift . . . and a
relationship that has continued up to the present.
But for this post about my most meaningful mentor, I'll speak of
Eric Ericson. Eric was never my teacher, but has undeniably been a major
influence on my music-making, repertoire, and approach to so many
things.
I was aware of Eric's recordings from at least the early '70s (Neil
Lieurance or Rod probably introduced me to them). I was fascinated with
the amazing sound of his Chamber Choir and the Swedish Radio Choir, the
purity of their intonation, and the repertoire they performed. In 1983
at the ACDA Conference I heard the Radio Choir live for the first time.
And since I'd just auditioned for the DMA program at CCM, was invited by
John Leman to join the masterclass conducting choir and got to observe
Eric's teaching first-hand.
The following fall I began at PLU and in 1985 Bruce Browne called
and said Eric's Conservatory Chamber Choir would be performing at the
ISME conference in Eugene, OR and wanted some other opportunities for
the choir. So I built the PLU Summer Choral Workshop around Eric and the
choir. They were in San Francisco before coming to Tacoma, so Eric flew
up and the choir came a day later on their tour bus. This was my first
time to get to know Eric, watch him work on conducting technique with
the whole group and a small group of master class conductors who worked
with the Chamber Choir. It was an amazing experience.
About a year later I participated as a singer in a choir put
together by Bruce Browne for his Haystack Workshop for which Eric was
the clinician, I brought Eric and the Conservatory Chamber Choir back to
PLU's summer workshop a few years later as well.
When I began thinking of a topic for my dissertation, I knew it
would be about Swedish choral music, so I traveled for the first time to
Sweden in April of 1989, where I searched for "the" topic, and Eric was
the guide, introducing me to lots of people and resources. I sublet the
apartment of one of his wife Monica's sons. I would then return for the
full summer of 1990 to do research (and sublet the apartment of another
of Monica’s son’s). Given the topic of my dissertation, Swedish A
Cappella Music Since 1945 (published later here)
I spoke with Eric numerous times, spent time in the Radio’s library,
spent time going through Eric’s personal library of scores in his
apartment, and Eric made connections for interviews with virtually every
important choral composer of the this time period, plus many conductors
and administrators.
I’ve also seen Eric work many times with his various choirs in
rehearsal, recording sessions, and concerts. He was also the first
conductor with a group of singers that would become Choral Arts. I’ve
had numerous discussions with him (and those close to him) about his
art. Eric was eternally curious about anything choral—always wanted to
know what you were doing, what others he knew were doing, what
repertoire you were doing (and it wasn’t easy to stump him about a huge
range of rep: “Oh yes, I did that in the late ‘60s" or (about some
obscure American piece), "Yes, I know that."
It’s hard to separate out all aspects of Eric as mentor, but so
many opportunities have come from my work with him. There’s so much
repertoire I’ve learned due to him. Approaches to sound (even though few
of us have the level of voices of the Radio or Chamber choirs), and
intonation have also come from him. And incredibly important is his work
ethic and dedication. Eric lived for music and this showed in his every
approach to music, music-making, and his choirs.
I owe him an immense debt. And thanking all my teachers and
mentors, I hope I have been a mentor to those students and conductors
I’ve come worked with over the years. That will certainly continue as
long as I’m able to help. It’s an important way of giving back all that I
(or you!) have been given over the years.
ACDA has a great new mentoring program and I hope you’ll consider being a mentor or mentee. Make sure you check it out!
(Will you one day be someone’s most meaningful mentor? Plant the
seeds today for tomorrow's choral world. ACDA Mentoring.
More from Daniel Coyle: Tip #8 - To Build Hard Skills, Work Like a Careful Carpenter
To develop reliable hard skills, you need to connect the right
wires in your brain. In this, it helps to be careful, slow, and keenly
attuned to errors. To work like a careful carpenter. . . . Precision
matters early on, because the first reps establish the pathways for the
future. Neurologists call this the “sled on a snowy hill” phenomenon.
The first repetitions are are like the first tracks on fresh snow: On
subsequent tries your sled will tend to follow those grooves. “Our
brains are good at building connections” says Dr. George Bartzokis, a
neurologist at UCLA. “They’re not so good at unbuilding them.”
This can have to do with building conducting skills, but has more to do with teaching our choirs.
As we rehearse, we help our choirs build all sorts of hard skills:
the rhythms and pitches of the music we’re teaching, the way they
approach a high note vocally, proper intonation, etc.. It means making
sure that you build each of these correctly. It’s necessary at some
points in the learning process to isolate elements to do this.
It’s one of the keys to Robert Shaw’s rehearsal process, which
developed through his work with his large symphonic choruses (the
Collegiate Chorale, Cleveland Symphony Orchestra Chorus, Atlanta
Symphony Orchestra Chorus) in order to build in all the different
elements correctly. He’s been known to say, “You have to clean the floor
before you hang the drapes.”
Pamela Elrod Huffman, who sang with Shaw, has written about Shaw’s techniques and done workshops on them. Here’s an article by Dr. Elrod from Southwest Musician
(the journal of the Texas Music Educators Association). Think through
what this means in the careful building of the skills (rhythm, pitch,
dynamics, text) to sing a given piece of music.
As I’ve stated before, I use some of Shaw’s techniques but work in a
different way—and in doing so, run the risk of moving too quickly and
the choir learning some things incorrectly (and then having to spend
time unlearning them). It’s definitely something for me to think about!
One of the areas I’ve learned you have to be very careful is in
working with intonation (you can find my Intonation series on this blog).
Allowing your ensemble to sing (even for a surprisingly short period of
time) under pitch can build that in so it’s very difficult to overcome.
Think carefully about those hard skills you teach your choir . . . and how you can work more “like a careful carpenter."
From Daniel Coyle’s The Little Book of Talent: Tip #7 “Before you start, figure out if it’s a hard skill or soft skill.”
Coyle divides up the skills we learn into two basic types:
“Hard skills are about repeatable precision, and tend to be found
in specialized pursuits, particularly physical ones.” He then gives
examples, such as swinging a golf club or tennis racket, learning the
multiplication tables, or a worker on an assembly line. “Here, your goal
is to build a skill that functions like a Swiss watch—reliable, exact,
and performed the same way every time, automatically, without fail. Hard
skills are about ABC: Always Be Consistent.”
“Soft, high-flexibility skills, on the other hand, are those that
have many paths to a good result, not just one. These skills aren’t
about doing the same thing perfectly every time, but rather about being
agile and interactive; about instantly recognizing patterns as they
unfold and making smart, timely choices. . . With these skills we are
not trying for Swiss watch precision, but rather for the ability to
quickly recognize a pattern or possibility, and to work past a complex
set of obstacles. Soft skills are about the three R’s: Reading,
Recognizing, and Reacting.”
It’s an interesting and helpful way to think of particular skills
we want to master, or those we want our choir to master. In the next two
tips, Coyle talks about how to develop either a hard or soft skill and
I’ll deal with that in the next couple posts.
However, I think that one builds on another. You can’t be truly
creative until you’ve mastered some of the underlying hard skills.
I’ll go back to John Wooden again, drawing from Ronald Gallimore
and Swen Nater’s book on his teaching/coaching: "drill for Coach Wooden
is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Drilling is intended to
achieve an automaticity or mastery of fundamentals that opens up
opportunities for individual creativity and initiative.”
In other words, the soft skills can’t come until the hard skills are well established.
If you want to improvise well, you have to have an incredibly
thorough understanding of the fundamentals and great technique with your
instrument. A friend told me a story recently about the late Gerre
Hancock (marvelous organist and choral musician who was a prodigious
improvisor) going to Paris to study improvisation with the noted
pedagogue, Nadia Boulanger. He came to her apartment the first time,
expecting a lesson on improvisation, but instead she handed him a fugue
subject and asked him to go write a fugue. He was a bit confused, but
did so (one wouldn’t argue with Madame Boulanger) and came back at the
next appointed time, fugue in hand. She corrected it, then handed him
another fugue subject. This continued for months. One week, after
bringing his fugue, he took the subject she handed him and began to
leave. “But no,” she said, “now you will come in and play a fugue based
on this subject.” In other words, he’d so thoroughly mastered the art of
writing a fugue that he could now begin to improvise one on the spot.
For conductors, clearly, developing the hard skill of a reliable
conducting technique is a necessary prelude to being able to improvise
gesture that fits the music one is conducting. As I tell my conducting
students, I rarely think about my gesture—but if I know the music
really, really well—have internalized it—then my gesture should do what
it’s supposed to do, elicit the music I hear internally from my singers
and instrumentalists.
The same is true of rehearsal technique. I’ve written about it here, here, and also here. As
your rehearsal technique becomes more and more secure, it allows the
freedom to improvise in rehearsal. Just as mastering the skills of
cooking and an understanding of how different ingredients will combine
allow a great chef the freedom to modify a recipe to great result.
In this sense, so much that we do is both craft and art: we have to work incredibly hard to develop our skills, our craft . . . but after that art has the possibility to flourish.
One of my fondest memories at PLU was taking the choir on tour and
getting to that point where the details of performing our repertoire
were secure in such a way that on a given night I could “play” with the
music and the choral "instrument." But this was always a two-way
street—the singers’ response (to the room, to the music) could also
influence me—in that way at its best, performance becomes a complex,
creative, and artistic dance between conductor and ensemble (and room
and audience). Those are the moments (not always present, of course)
when the experience transcends our usual music making. And those
transcendent moments and performances are what makes it all worthwhile.
The point, of course, isn’t to be stupid, but to be willing to
fail, to take risks. Coyle uses the example of Wayne Gretzky falling in
practice and says, “As skilled as he was, Gretzky was determined to
improve, to push the boundaries of the possible. The only way that
happens is to build new connections in the brain—which means reaching,
failing, and yes, looking stupid.”
There is a great Nike ad
with Michael Jordan, which you probably already know, but it makes the
same point: without taking risks (and failing) you won’t fail . . . but
you’re unlikely to grow either.
But what does this mean for the conductor?
It certainly means challenging yourself. How can you push yourself beyond your current boundaries, your current skill level?
Repertoire is one logical area—it’s the basis for all we do, after
all. Eric Ericson always maintained that his choirs (and he) grew
through the challenges of particular repertoire:
You asked how technique and proficiency developed, and I can almost
mention certain pieces which were "rungs on the ladder" . . . because
that's how I feel so strongly when we've learned a difficult and very
good piece. I'm thinking naturally from the viewpoint of the Chamber
Choir with [Lidholm's] Laudi from 1947, Fyra körer from 1953, then the
big pieces of Stravinsky, Nono . . . Dallapiccola perhaps most of all,
which is where we learned to read notes and rhythms. And then of course
we have a Swedish piece, again by Lidholm [1956--Canto], that we
struggled with for half a year. I have a certain sense that, when you
"come out on the other side" after having done a piece like Lidholm's
Canto, you are a better musician, a better conductor, a better
chorister. Canto feels like a final exam for the '50s choral life . . .
early pieces that were difficult tonally and rhythmically became less
so. Canto combined all the difficulties one was thrown between.
What repertoire will push your musicianship, your conducting
technique, your ability to teach a particular style? The risk of failure
or looking stupid is there, but believe me, it’s worth it.
Coyle says, “Feeling stupid is no fun. But being willing to be
stupid—in other words, being willing to risk the emotional pain of
making mistakes—is absolutely essential, because reaching, failing, and
reaching again is the way your brain grows and makes new connections.
When it comes to developing talent, remember, mistakes are not really
mistakes—they are the guideposts you use to get better."
Another worthwhile book I’ve written about is Mindset by Carol Dweck—the full post is here.
It deals with two different mindsets regarding learning. From that blog post:
Dweck says, "Everyone is born with an intense drive to learn.
Infants stretch their skills daily. Not just walk and talk. They never
decide it's too hard or not worth the effort. They walk, they fall, they
get up. They just barge forward."
Somewhere along the line, though, some children learn that they are
being evaluated and become afraid of challenges (and paradoxically,
continual praising children as being smart or supremely talented can
lead to the fixed mindset).
She tells of a study where they offered four-year-olds the choice
between redoing an easy jigsaw puzzle or trying a harder one. Even at
this age, kids who had a fixed mindset--that is, they believed in fixed
traits--chose the safe one. They told the researchers, kids who are born
smart "don't do mistakes." The other children with a growth
mindset--who believed you could get smarter--couldn't imagine doing a
puzzle they'd done before. One girl said, "I'm dying to figure them
out!"
Again from Dweck, "So children with the fixed mindset want to make
sure they succeed. Smart people should always succeed. But for children
with the growth mindset, success is about stretching themselves. It's
about becoming smarter.”
All of us have things we’re comfortable with: our conducting
technique, rehearsal technique, our usual way of doing things. Sometimes
in order to grow, we have to give up our comfortable ways and change
our technique—in a very real sense, change who we are. This almost
certainly will mean that for a period of time you’ll be uncomfortable
and, in fact, probably won’t do as well. But you need the time to grow
those new connections in your brain—and perhaps, feel “stupid” for
awhile. But if you’re not willing to go through that process you won’t
grow.
So, if you want to grow and improve, don’t be afraid of mistakes
and failure: "be willing to be stupid.” Challenge yourself, put yourself
in situations where you’re certain to struggle. And give yourself the
opportunity to change and grow.
Daniel Coyle's The Little Book of Talent: 52 Tips for Improving Your Skills
Tip #3 is, "Steal without apology." This is something I've long
believed—it's one of the best ways to acquire new skills. When you see a
fine conductor do something—gesture, rehearsal technique, etc.—that
works, follow the advice given in the first post,
quoting Coyle, "Many hotbeds use an approach I call the engraving
method. Basically, they watch the skill being performed, closely and
with great intensity, over and over, until they build a high-intensity
mental blueprint." Then . . . add it to your repertoire. As Picasso
says, "Good artists borrow. Great artists steal."
An interesting example is given:
Linda Septien, founder of the Linda Septien School of Contemporary
Music, a hotbed near Dallas that has produced millions of dollars in pop
music talent (including Demi Lovato, Ryan Cabrera, and Jessica
Simpson), tells her students, "Sweetheart, you gotta steal like crazy.
Look at every single performer better than you and see what they've got
that you can use. Then make it your own. Septien follows her own advice,
having accumulated fourteen three-ring notebooks worth of ideas stolen
from top performers. In plastic sleeves inside the binders, in some
cases scribbled on cocktail napkins, reside tips on everything from how
to hit a high note to how to deal with a rowdy crowd (a joke works
best).
I know I can trace some specific gestures or rehearsal techniques I
use to particular teachers, mentors, or conductors I've observed. But
you have to find a way to make these skills yours. That comes with
practice. You have to absorb it so thoroughly that it now belongs to
you. And, of course, to quote Ecclesiastes, "There is nothing new under
the sun." Those you "steal" from have no doubt "stolen" it from someone
else.
You can also absorb certain things unconsciously . . . and that can
be good or bad. I know some things I learned as a singer in Rod
Eichenberger's University of Washington Chorale as an
undergraduate—notably a sense of rhythm and phrasing—gradually became a
part of me and my approach to music, and for that I'll be eternally
grateful.
But at the same time sometimes we copy things that aren't
an essential part of a conductor's success. If you copy Robert Shaw's
rehearsing with a towel around his neck instead of his amazing score
study habits, it's unlikely your conducting will improve!
So, steal freely. But make sure you practice until the new skill
belongs to you . . . and then someone else can steal it from you.
This next blog series revolves around several books and their
perspectives on increasing our skills. Those skills can range from
conducting technique to rehearsal technique to score study, if we think
of our own skills as conductors. It can also mean the skills we teach
our singers, which are equally important.
As you've seen in the previous series on Books Worth Reading, I
often draw inspiration from books that aren't directly about music—they
can range from psychology to sports to . . . well, almost anything.
I'll start with Daniel Coyle's The Little Book of Talent, which I referenced here.
It developed out of Coyle's research (as a magazine writer develping an
article) looking at "talent hotbeds" and how some people or schools or
organizations developed an inordinate (and statistically significantly
larger) number of exceptionally talented individuals. In essence, how
these particular individuals showed such remarkable skill growth. The
"Little Book" is his series of tips for improving skills.
So, let's get to work!
Tip #2 is "Spend 15 Minutes a Day Engraving the Skill on Your
Brain" (I wrote about Tip #1, "Stare About Who You Want to Become," in
the post linked above).
Coyle says that in learning a new skill, "Many hotbeds use an
approach I call the engraving method. Basically, they watch the skill
being performed, closely and with great intensity, over and over, until
they build a high-intensity mental blueprint." He uses an example of
Timothy Gallwey teaching a woman who'd never played tennis how to hit a
forehand, without ever saying a word, in about 20 minutes. He
also uses the example of Suzuki teaching, where a particular song is
engraved by listening intently (and over and over) in the students'
brains.
There are many ways to use this idea (which isn't new, of course).
I remember learning to do a "kip" on the high bar as a junior high school student (this video
shows a kip as a way to get onto the bar—it's only a little humiliating
that the person doing the kip—and something much more difficult
afterward—is a 6 year old girl!). It wasn't until I'd watched it done by
my fellow classmates many times that I could imagine how it felt
in my brain, that I could do it myself. I had to internalize and
imagine doing the move before I could do it. But it was visualizing the
move intensely that made that happen.
How can this apply to skill development? Lots of ways, of course!
Learning a new conducting technique, watch someone intently on the
particular technique/move (someone who does it well, of course!). Given
today's video capability with our phones, get video of someone (a
colleague, your teacher, fellow student) doing it. Spend 15 minutes a
day watching intently and absorbing the move until you can feel it in your brain. Then see if you can do it, having absorbed it into your own physical repertoire.
For singers to recreate certain kinds of sounds we can teach in a variety of ways, but models—sound
models—can be the most effective. If a picture is worth a thousand
words, can't we say the same thing about sound? Demonstrations (by
yourself if you're skilled, by another member of the choir, or by a
guest—perhaps a voice teacher) can help create the sound you desire from
your choir, often more quickly than other methods. Of course, you have
to be careful about this. In any demonstration you may inadvertently
create some things you don't want. Intonation is a particular
one—a good example of quality of sound may be sabotaged by your not
paying attention to your intonation. Recordings can also be used, but
care needs to be taken to give examples that are possible for your
singers. I wouldn't use the Swedish Radio Choir for a middle school
choir! (But I might use a recording of a great middle school choir—for
example, a recording of boys singing with the best possible sound for
male singers that age)
Style can also be taught/absorbed through excellent recordings. Long ago, when I was preparing the Brahms Liebeslieder Walzer with
my choir at PLU, I began every rehearsal playing recordings of Strauss
waltzes by the Vienna Philharmonic. It was to absorb the style (very
natural to those musicians) of playing a waltz: the right kind of lilt,
where the 2nd beat gets placed rhythmically, the difference between a
waltz and a Ländler). How much did it help? I can't separate it out, but
I believe much is absorbed unconsciously in doing this kind of
listening. I should also say that I had a waltz party with our dance
teacher coming in to teach the singers to dance the waltz!
Think of your own examples! Please reply and share your ideas with everyone!
I'm fascinated by creative people in other arts than music. Since
I'm married to a visual artist (who loves music, luckily), I often get
cross-pollination of ideas from another viewpoint (and she has good
ears, too!).
Twyla Tharp
is a choreographer who's done work that ranges from her own company,
choreography for other companies (premieres of 16 of her works at the
American Ballet Theatre), Broadway (particularly her successful show
based on Billy Joel songs), and film (she worked with Milos Forman on Hair, Ragtime, and Amadeus).
Her underlying point is that creativity is a habit, a product of
preparation and effort, and she then explores the exercises she does to
create ideas.
She begins each day going to the gym. As she tells us, rituals of
preparation are important to the creative artist—the habits we build.
She says the ritual is not the exercises she does, the ritual is the
cab. "The moment I tell the driver where to go I have completed the
ritual. . . . It's vital to establish some rituals—automatic but
decisive patterns of behavior—at the beginning of the creative process,
when you are most at peril of turning back, chickening out, giving up,
or going the wrong way." She gives examples of different artists'
rituals, including Igor Stravinsky, who played a Bach fugue at the piano
every day when he entered his studio.
A list of chapter headings is vague, but will give you a few ideas:
Your Creative DNA
Harness Your Memory
Before You Can Think out of the Box, You Have to Start with a Box
Scratching
Accidents Will Happen
Spine
Skill
Ruts and Grooves
An "A" in Failure
The Long Run
As "recreative" artists we may think that the kind of
creativity needed by a choreographer, visual artist, playwright, author,
composer, or architect has little to do with what we do. But we have to
"re-engineer" the compositions we perform, imagine them through the
composer's mind and spirit. Programming is a mightily creative act (or
should be)! And, although I've spoken of rehearsal technique as craft,
it is also art when we're at our best. With one of my choirs right now
I've needed to re-think aspects of how I normally rehearse—and the
creative energy I put into planning those rehearsals will ultimately
affect what I do in other ones. There are so many ways in which
creativity is at the heart of what we do. Following a great creative
artist such as Twyla Tharp through her process, seeing her "toolbox,"
and getting inside her mind is enormously helpful.
I hope you get a chance to enjoy and learn from it!
I think the best of the books about John Wooden's teaching (which really was the bulk of his approach to coaching) is You Haven't Taught Until They Have Learned,
by Swen Nater (one of Wooden's players at UCLA) and Ronald Gallimore (a
psychologist whose research was in teaching, and who with his colleague
Roland Tharp did research with Wooden back in the mid-70s when he was
still coaching). I talked about this in a previous series about Wooden,
all of which can be found here and the particular posts that involve Nater & Gallimore's book here, here, here, here, here, and here.
While those posts will tell you a lot about the book . . . there's
no substitute for reading it yourself. I believe there's a huge amount
to think about (and learn from) in it.
By the way, I've been giving links to Amazon, just for convenience. When I'm buying a used book I also check Thriftbooks,
since they often have great prices and free shipping (they work with
independent bookstores from all over the country). My copy of this book
came from them, although I see right now that it's out of stock (they
have an earlier edition, but I'm not sure that's the same). You may have
other places to look as well–let us know if you do!
For this blog series I started out with the idea of alternating
books on music with books on other subjects. But I've realized that most
of the great music books are fairly well known or are are so specific
that they might have limited interest (maybe I'll combine some in a post
later).
So I'm going on with books on other subjects that I hope you'll find of interest.
Coyle is a journalist who, for an article, researched
places—training centers, camps, charter schools, etc.—which created a
much higher level of talented people than others ("hotbeds of talent").
He also visited with scientists doing research, notably K. Anders
Ericsson from Florida State University, who coined the term "deliberate
practice" to describe a very focused, intense type of practice (it's
also his research that led to the "10,000 hour rule," which Malcolm
Gladwell popularized in his book, Outliers, the Story of Success). And if you want to know more about deliberate practice (it's worth it), this article has some great links.
Honestly, all of those books are worth reading, but The Little Book of Talent
is exactly that, a little book, the hardback edition the physical size
of a paperback, 119 pages long. Since Coyle himself is a "father,
volunteer basketball coach, and husband of a hockey-playing wife," while
he did his research he wondered about all sorts of practical problems:
As a family, we struggled daily with the usual questions and
anxieties that revolve around the process of acquiring and developing
skills. How do we help our daugher learn her multiplication tables? Howe
do we tell a genuine talent from a momentary interest? What's the best
way to spark motivation? . . . As it turned out, visiting these
remarkable places was not just a chance for me to be a journalist. It
was also a chance to become a better coach and a better dad.
So, he started taking notes when he spotted a great tip for
teaching or learning. And those notes became the basis for this book,
divided into several categories (his words quoted below):
Getting Started: ideas for igniting motivation and creating a blueprint for the skills you want to build.
Improving Skills: methods and techniques for making the most progress in the least time.
Sustaining Progress: strategies for overcoming plateaus, keeping motivational fires lit, and building habits for long-term success.
Tip #1 is "stare at who you want to become." This is about
using role models—those people who already can do those things you'd
like to be able to do—and truly and deeply observe what they do and how
they do it (in Coyle's words, "the kind of raw, unblinking, intensely
absorbed gazes you see in hungry cats or newborn babies"). For example,
very early on I started to focus on and track how the conductor of the
choir rehearsed (Rod Eichenberger was my undergrad teacher). After doing
this for awhile, I would try to guess what Rod was going to do when he
stopped the choir. Would he address pitch, rhythm, sound, intonation,
phrasing? Did he stop to address the altos or the tenors? And I got
pretty good at knowing what he was going to do. I was not
analyzing what he was doing—I didn't write things down or classify the
kinds of things he'd did. I was simply absorbing how he prioritized in a
rehearsal and, of course, was listening intently to what the
choir did. And in doing this, I was absorbing a chunk of his rehearsal
technique without thinking about it consciously. I continued to do this
with any conductor I worked with and could often start to catch on to
what a conductor would most likely do after a relatively short period of
time. This was even true when I visited Wilhelm Ehmann in Germany when I
was 21. I didn't understand any German at that time, but could still
begin to make good guesses at what he'd do after even a few days. We all
have people we admire. Don't be afraid to do all possible to absorb
what they do.
Tip #15, "break every move down into chunks."
Every skill built out of smaller pieces—what scientists call chunks.
Chunks are to skill what letters of the alphabet are to language.
Alone, each is nearly useless, but when combined into bigger chunks
(words), and when those chunks are combined into still bigger things
(sentences, paragraphs), they can build something complex and beautiful.
. .
. . . ask yourself:
What is the smallest single element of this skill that I can master?
What other chunks link to that chunk?
Practice on chunk by itself until you've mastered it—then connect more chunks, one by one . . .
. . . Musicians at Meadowmount [one of his hotbeds of talent] cut
apart musical scores with scissors and put the pieces into a hat, then
pull each section out at random. Then, after the chunks are learned
separately, they start combining them in the correct order, like so many
puzzle pieces. "It works because the students aren't just playing the
music on autopilot—they're thinking," says one of the school's violin
instructors, Skye Carman.
In teaching vocal skills, most teachers separate out elements of
good singing—posture, breathing, onset of tone, vowels, etc.—and work on
each separately, then combine in order, since breath builds on posture,
etc.. However, I found the Meadowmout idea fascinating and it reminded
me of some aspects of Eric Ericson's rehearsal technique. He'd often
take a piece and work on just one section of it in a rehearsal (the one
that needed most work, of course!). But over the course of the
rehearsals, all would gradually fit together and make sense.
Re-reading that little tip was already worth it for me! See if the book can offer you some ideas as well.
How do we, given the enormous number of things we do in our jobs as
conductors, keep sane and healthy? How can we deal better with stress?
Are there ways for us to do what we do with joy, full energy, and full engagement?
This week's title is The Power of Full Engagement
by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz. The subtitle tells the story: "Managing
Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal."
Jim Loehr has been a coach to hundreds of athletes, working with,
among others tennis players Pete Sampras, Jim Courier, and Monica Seles;
golfers Mark O'Meara and Ernie Els; basketball players Nick Anderson
and Grant Hill; and speed skater Dan Jansen. Loehr's coaching was not
about their athletic skills or technique, but in helping them manage
their energy more effectively. After those successes, Loehr's company
expanded to corporate clients and entrepreneurs.
In his language, you have to become a "corporate athlete"—we might say "conductor athlete" or "teaching athlete."
In order to achieve great performance he outlines several principles:
Full engagement requires drawing on four separate but related sources of energy: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual
Because energy capacity diminishes both with overuse and underuse,
we must balance energy expenditure with intermittent energy renewal
To build capacity, we must push beyond our normal limits, training in the same systematic way that elite athletes do
Positive energy rituals—highly specific routines for managing
energy—are the key to full engagement and sustained high performance
This has to do with all the elements that go into those areas
of energy: what you eat, how you exercise, how you rest and sleep, etc.
He says, "The richest, happiest and most productive lives are
characterized by the ability to fully engage in the challenge at hand,
but also to disengage periodically and seek renewal. Instead, many of us
live our lives as if we are running in and endless marathon, pushing
ourselves far beyond healthy levels of exertion. We become flat liners
mentally and emotionally by relentlessly spending energy without
sufficient recovery. Either way, we slowly but inexorably wear down."
The space (and time to write!) I have for this blog is far too
short to fully describe the book. He uses a hypothetical example of a
stressed out manager who's falling apart that they work with in order to
go through the steps of building capacity (in all the areas: physical,
emotional, mental and spiritual). It's a good way to illustrate the
process they take clients through in their work (and to imagine your own
challenges).
I've found this immensely valuable, although I'm not equally
successful in all areas! However, this year is a good test for me: last
year, in addition to my teaching and administrative job at UNT, I became
Interim Chancel Choir Director at the largest Methodist Church in the
world: Highland Park UMC. This year, however, I've added the title (and
most of the job) of Interim Director of Music & Arts in a program
with a big concert series and many other things to administer. I have
help, of course, and the staff at HPUMC is wonderful. But I still have
to find the time to get all the work done at both jobs and not short
either place.
I'd already learned one of the biggest lessons from the book, which
is that humans work best naturally in a rhythmic, pulsing way—i.e., we
need to regularly exert effort, but then disengage, even if briefly.
Over the last decade or so I've gotten much better at being able to work
intensely with lots of focus and energy, but then disengage for a short
time with an activity (which can be surprisingly short) that allows me
to recharge my batteries. Much like the waves in the ocean, the energy
we exert needs to be used in pulses of both energy and rest and renewal.
I'm much better at giving myself time for mental, emotional, and
spiritual renewal. And I find ways, when I have a day off to truly
disengage, renew and recreate (and I usually schedule a massage!). All
of that is invaluable.
I'm not nearly as good keeping up with the physical side: making
time for regular exercise, eating better, and getting enough sleep . . .
but I'm working on it!
I think you'll find this book and its ideas a valuable addition to
your library. All of us need to find ways to renew ourselves to be able
to give our choirs the best we have to offer! And we need it to truly live life and not just survive it.
My next recommendation is a book by Doug Lemov, who you may know from the book Teach Like a Champion or it's follow-up, Teach Like a Champion Field Guide. Both are terrific, all about better ways to teach. I recommend them, too!
This is all about the art (and science, in some cases) of practice.
Using examples from top-level athletes and established teachers, as
well as those in business or even long-time surgeons, the authors show
how deliberately engineered and designed practice can make us better at
almost anything we do (this quoted from the inside dust jacket, but very
accurate. The fact that they don't use musicians in their examples won't get in the way of figuring out how better to teach your students, or rehearsing/practicing with your choir to make them better.
Since much of what they did in looking at champion teachers was to try to find ways to get other,
less experienced or less skilled teachers to learn how to follow those
models, they discovered that it was important for them to find better
ways for the teachers to practice their new skills. Otherwise
they weren't successful. So now they had to discover the rules of
successful practice, or their teaching technique wouldn't improve.
I'll give a random set of examples of chapter titles ("Rules") to give you an idea:
Encode Success
Let the Mind Follow the Body
Unlock Creativity . . . with Repetition
Practice "Bright Spots"
Correct Instead of Critique
Isolate the Skill
Integrate the Skills
Make Each Minute Matter
Shorten the Feedback Loop
Describe the Solution (Not the Problem)
Break Down the Barriers to Practice
Make it Fun to Practice
Leverage Peer-to-Peer Accountability
Walk the Line (Between Support and Demand)
Some of these won't be clear until you read the chapters (and
remember, there are 42 "rules"). But it should give you an inkling of
what's going on here.
Just as an example, "Shorten the Feedback Loop." This built on John Wooden's teaching (you can find a series I wrote about him here,
fourteen posts about Coach Wooden's technique and approach): as a
former player noted, "he believed correction was wasted unless done
immediately" -- in other words, without quick correction, the player was
building in the wrong thing--practicing the incorrect thing.
I wrote about this in terms of work with my choirs telling them the difference between scrimmage and drill. In a scrimmage, we're looking at a game (for us, concert) situation in practice--running through a section or complete piece. Whereas in drill,
we focus on fewer things, much repetition, and constant corrections.
While we need both (and the percentage spent in each will change as we
get closer to the concert), without lots of drill, certain things simply
won't get better. It's focused drill, with constant feedback, that will
make the choir better in the shortest time. We still have to mix in
scrimmage, otherwise they don't know how to get through a section or
piece, but that's a matter of balance. I also discovered that my
students quickly got the idea of the importance of drill and this made
them much more patient with the quick start/stop/correction/sing it
again of drill. As I put it in an earlier post, it greatly increased the
density of accomplishment in my rehearsals.
I'm still reading and re-reading this book in little
chunks, then thinking about how a particular technique or way of
thinking might apply to me in my work with choirs. I suspect I will for a
long time. And I hope you'll find it valuable, too!
I finally found my copy of Ron Jeffers' notes from attending a
workshop with Eric Ericson. These are fantastic and illustrate many aspects
of Eric's art, so I thought it worthwhile to interrupt my current blog
series on worthwhile reading to give this. As the pdf states, it's from a workshop in 1981 (Haystack is a large rock--shaped like a Haystack--at Cannon Beach, OR).
Most of you will know Ron as the owner of publisher earthsongs or for his (invaluable--and this really is a book you want on your shelf!) book on translations of Latin texts (or the follow-ups in other languages by different authors). But you may not know that Ron was an absolutely first-rate choral conductor at Oregon State University and other places.
It's remarkable to hear a professional orchestra--and I can think of
hardly anyone else other than Ivan Fischer who would do it!--sing some a
cappella Brahms:
Message from Ivan Fischer:
"Dear Friends, on this present tour I asked the Budapest Festival
Orchestra to start a new life – to sing regularly. At the end of the
Proms and elsewhere on tour we performed Abendständchen by Brahms as an
encore only after three days of practice.
"Why? Because people
should sing! Mothers should sing to their babies, children should sing
in children’s choirs and adults should rediscover this wonderful
communication tool. So we should set an example and start to show that
it is possible to overcome fears and inhibitions.
"If you want to hear our very first attempt, please scroll to the end of the symphony, ca 45 minutes on this link."
This one will be short (busy week!) and is not a book to read, but a great reference to have on your shelf: The A to Z of Foreign Musical Terms by Christine Ammer. Scores often have terminology in foreign languages
and since the composer put them there to give you information about
performance (calando, marziale, etc.), it's imperative to know what they
mean. I've almost never found a term that isn't included in this
lovely, compact, inexpensive (currently $9.68 on Amazon) reference!
Incredibly helpful. For "calando," for example, it tells you that it's
Italian and that it means, "Becoming softer and slower." That's opposed
to "calcando," which means: 1- "Forcefully, pressing on" or 2-
"Imitating, copying."
Thomas M. Sterner's The Practicing Mind: Developing Focus and Discipline in Your Life.
Sterner is a musician, worked for years as a piano tuner/technician, as
well as having an interest in Eastern philosophy. It's one of the best
books I've read about developing better habits of discipline and focus.
He has a wonderful little section that speaks to our habit of rushing
through things and multi-tasking: with a day ahead that included getting
two pianos ready (one for the piano soloist with the local symphony),
then travel to do other tuning work, then back in the evening to check
both pianos before the concert. He notes that he'd done this kind of
thing many times and knew very well how much time it took, and that it
was about two and a half times the amount considered a day's work in the
trade. I'll let him speak from here:
When I started on the first piano, I put all of my effort
into "being slow." I opened my tool box very slowly. Instead of grabbing
a handful of tools and thinking I was saving time, I took each tool out
one at a time. I placed each tool neatly in position. When I began
setting up the piano, I performed each process individually, trying to
deliberately work slowly.
It's a funny feeling when you try this. At first, your internal dialogue
is howling at you to get going and pick up the pace. It is screaming at
you, "We'll never get this done, you are wasting time." It is reminding
you of the whole day's worth of work you have to get done to meet
everyone's approval. You can feel the anxiety start to build and the
emotions floating up to the surface. However, your ego quickly loses
ground to the simplicity of doing one thing at a time and doing it
slowly, on purpose. It has no place to build stress and work up internal
chatter. That is because working slowly in today's world goes against
every thought system. You can only work slowly if you do it
deliberately. Being deliberate requires you to stay in the process, to
work in the present moment.
After I finished the first instrument, I even went through the process
of packing up my tools with meticulous care, just to walk ten feet away
and unpack them slowly, one at a time, to start the second piano.
Usually I would grab two handfuls of as much as I could carry and scurry
through the orchestra chairs on stage trying to sve time. Not this day,
however. I was determined to carry out my goal plan of just trying to
work slowly. We spend so much time rushing everything we do. Rushing had
become so much of a habit that I was amazed at the concentration it
took to work slowly on purpose.
I took off my watch so I wouldn't be tempted to look at the time and let
that influence my pace. I told myself, "I am dong this for me and for
my health, both physical and mental. I have a cell phone and, if need
be, I can call whomever and tell them I am running late, and that's the
best I can do."
Into the second piano, I began to realize how wonderful I felt. No
nervous stomach, no anticipation of getting through the day, and no
tight muscles in my shoulders and neck, just this relaxed, peaceful,
what-a-nice-day-it-is feeling. I would even go so far as to describe it
as blissful. Anything you can do in a rushing state is surprisingly easy
when you deliberately slow it down. The revelation for me came,
however, when I finished the second piano. I very slowly put my tools
away one by one with my attention to every detail. I continued my effort
at slowing down as I walked to my truck in the parking garage a block
away. I walked very slowly, paying attention to each step. This may
sound nuts at first, but it was an experiment on my part. I was
experiencing such an incredible feeling of peacefulness in a situation
that usually had every muscle in my body tense that I wanted to see just
how far I could intensify the situation with my effort.
When I got to the truck, the clock radio came on with the turn of the
key and I was dumbfounded. So little time had passed compared to what I
had usually experienced for the same job in the past that I was sure the
clock was incorrect. Keep in mind that I was repeating a process that I
had done for many years. I have set up these pianos together sometimes
five and six times a week. I had a very real concept of the time
involved in the project. I pulled my watch out of my pocket as a second
check. It agreed with the clock-radio that I had cut over 40 percent off
the time. I had tried to work as slowly as possible and I had been sure
I was running an hour late. Yet I had either worked faster (which
didn't seem possible, given my attention to slowness), or I had slowed
time down (an interesting thought, but few would buy it). Either way, I
was sufficiently motivated to press on with the experiment throughout
the remainder of the day. I got so far ahead of schedule that I was
afforded the luxury of a civilized meal in a nice restaurant, instead of
the usual sandwich in the truck or no lunch at all.
I have repeated these results consistently every time I have worked at
being slow and deliberate. I have used this technique with everything
from cleaning up the dishes after dinner to monotonous areas of piano
restoration work that I don't particularly enjoy. The only thing that
foils the result is when I am particularly lacking in stamina and find
myself drifting back and forth between working with slowness and
succumbing to my feeling of, "I have to get this work done quickly."
The rest of the book is certainly as good and as interesting as this passage.
How often do we rush our own work? Whether in preparation (score study,
prepping for a class), teaching or rehearsal, does rushing (because we
know we have so much to cover!) help?
One of the notable things about the Swedish Radio Choir is their ability
to work in a slow, concentrated way on different elements in the music,
for example, intonation--it's quite extraordinary. And I had a
rehearsal on Rachmaninoff's The Bells with them where I
moved at too fast a pace, which resulted in frustration (and not faster
results). We need to think of this in our rehearsals: rushing (and not
really mastering a passage in the music) rarely accomplishes much and
may in fact build in bad habits or mistakes. But it also means we have
to build up the ability of our singers (at different levels, of course)
to focus, concentrate, and do the patient work necessary to succeed in
difficult music. This is perhaps even more true today with all the
distractions (cell phones, instant messaging, Facebook, etc.) of the
modern world.
Lots to think about, but this is certainly a book that's worthwhile!
Richard Sparks is a conductor.
He's Professor of Music at the University of North Texas, where he conducts the University Singers and Collegium Singers, and is also Chair of the Division of Conducting and Ensembles.
From 1999-2011 he was Artistic Director and Conductor of Pro Coro Canada in Edmonton, Alberta--a professional chamber choir; and a free-lance conductor/clinician working in the US, Canada, and Europe. He spent considerable time working with the Swedish Radio Choir in 2007 and 2008.
He's Conductor Emeritus of Choral Arts in Seattle, WA (which he founded and conducted from 1993-2006) and was Director of Choral Activities at Pacific Lutheran University from 1983-2001.
