Melbourne: ABODA Victoria – Summer Conducting School
Principal teacher: Professor Craig Kirchhoff
Friday 14/01/2011
Opening Morning Session:
Score Study
1. Intellectual understanding – form, harmonic structure, and chaconne theme inverted etc.
2. Internalisation
3. Emotional understanding
Recording: Colgrass “Urban Requiem”.
- We listened and wrote down feeling words as listening.
- Most of us won’t be able to play music like that with our ensembles, but it’s important that we listen.
- Suggestion: Write in score – what emotions are being projected.
Score and recording: Shostakovich “Prelude”.
- Written at time of duress in USSR. Had to write music for the state.
- While listening and we wrote emotions on score.
- Some responses: Dark, foreboding, impending doom then doom, suppression, despair, suffering, resignation, exhaustion, apathy
- Score study question … what’s different and why is it different? E.g. Only two major chords – why are they there (b.14)?
- Listened to it again – and observed what was brought to the score by the musicians beyond the notation. After discussion found that dynamics/tempo/note weight e.g. use of heavy note weight in b.1 to give pensiveness, darkness. Use of silence to increase the drama.
Silence sets up drama [side comment: that’s why you wait for a small silence before conducting]
“Create opportunities for students to really connect with music through feelings which can be life transforming.”
“Make the smallest note in the phrase the most expressive”
Need to have a point of view when rehearsing, so that going beyond intonation etc. How do I manipulate the musical elements to express?
Score and recording: Schuman “Chester”
- Revolutionary War.
- Observed what was brought to the score by the musicians beyond the notation.
- Phrasal analysis is good but also examine inside each phrase to go to the relationship of notes with each other.
- Explore the emotional content and then figure out a way to manipulate the musical elements on the page to make it come alive.
- Do anything it takes to make the music more vivid – have to take over ownership.
- Rolling log tempo – establish a tempo then let go on own momentum and only push along as needed (result will be less conducting)
Score and Recording: McGinty “The Red Balloon”
- Listened – feeling words.
- Listened again. This time with view point on how would have done it differently. Could reflect on own use of: Balance, Rubato, Tempo, and Dynamics. Note weights, Tempo and timbre (e.g. using different mallets on percussion)
- Publishers’ recording … point of departure
Music is the master / technique the servant
Rather than “Trumpets too loud” say “Trumpets need to play less so it’s more dreamlike”
Say “Flutes need to make the beginning less complicated – more simple and childlike”
Rehearsal techniques. Use reseating to help students hear better or differently.
Encourage students to have interpretive initiatives
Engage students’ imagination: Can do this with music that fits 80/20 rule.
Conducting Session
Some quotes:
“Be less when monitoring so you can be more when there’s something to “say””
“Your intent is more important than the gesture”
“Art of conducting is knowing when to beat time and when to release the beat to better describe the music more”
“When to monitor the music and just let them play”
“Soften marcato with circles”
“Difficult to conduct marches – really have to release conducting the beat.”
“Be confident, be wilful, be the music”
“Use gravity to show fz – use downward energy”
“If you get the sound you want who cares what it looks like”
“Changing conducting plane changes meaning”
“Beating time is not conducting”
“Make gestures wilfully so they have intent”
“Got to get exactly what you’re after”
“Scream from the inside with intent”
“Be ridiculous gives permission to just get out and do it”
“Non-verbal conducting and mime is all interconnected”
“It’s all about communication”
“It’s risky not beating time – so that whatever you say you really have to mean it”
“Musicians will remember what you want if you give them positive reinforcement when they get it right (or better) – then they’ll do it each time”
“When you’re monitoring stay in the middle of it”
“All have certain amount of energy – when monitoring have to put the energy somewhere else i.e., torso, eyes, and face”
Afternoon Session: In Action Rehearsal…
1. Harmony: how the music flows
2. Pitch and intonation
3. Dynamics
4. Timbre
5. Rhythm and articulation
6. Balance and orchestration
7. Line and continuity
8. Challenge is to operate across all
- Looping technical passages – repeating. Slowing down so conductor and student can hear what’s going on. Form a loop and gradually take it faster and faster until what’s wanted is achieved.
- Announcements etc. not from the podium. Podium is for making music.
- Slow pieces esp. with rubato, are difficult to bring together – half ensemble sizzle other half plays, then swap. Have sizzles not too loud and have people who are playing to “listen louder than they’re playing”
- Instead of sizzling have entire ensemble play passages in subdivided quavers. Write note shapes on a white board to illustrate … a lot of students are visual learners. Change the diagrams. If not together “lower voice” listen up for style.
- If can’t hear what’s not quite right, a technique is to walk into the ensemble – brass only … fine, clarinets only etc.
- Bop technique – just play the beginning of notes using “resonant” quavers. With and without conducting.
- Use combinations of sizzle, subdivided quavers, Bop, illustrations on the board.
- The more you keep people involved in rehearsals the better.
- Keep a sense of beat continuing in the background (for the conductor) when ensemble has been stopped, this keeps ensemble pace moving along and a sense of music continuing even when things are stopped.
- Have woodwind facing the brass with the percussion in the centre. Brass fit your sounds inside the woodwinds.
- Sit anyplace except next to person already beside.
- All ensemble members form quartets. Goal is for members to hear each other. Play a particular phrase/section – from memory if possible. One person from each quartet moves to another. Maybe even assign who sits where.
- In rehearsal conductor only has two ears – do what can be done to have all students’ ears working at same level as conductor.
- Concentric circles
- Part of playing together is watching each other … but more so it’s listening.
- Intonation gets better with listening.
Followed by about 3 hours of working with participant conductors with the Summer School Band. 10 Minutes each participant followed by 20 minute individual lesson which reviewed DVD of performance and set goals for final conducting session on Saturday.
