Picking Music for High School Choir

For the last three days, I have been back at work. After brief meetings on Monday and Tuesday mornings, I've been pretty free to work in the classroom and prepare for when students return.

Today, I spent several hours working on selecting what music my group will be studying. This is a massive and very individual task, as everyone I've talked to goes about it differently.

My typical process is more or less like this:

1. Determine what constraints there are on the piece. These might be things like "must be in a foreign language" or "must be three-part harmony"
2. Consult resources. At my desk, I have on hand three primary resources for pieces: The UIL Prescribed Music List, the library of music my choir program owns, and the textbooks and anthologies we sometimes refer to.
3. Select a handful of pieces to examine closely. I apply the constraints from step one to the music in step two. I usually end up finding at least 3-4 out of a dozen pieces that seem like possibilities.
4. Listen to the work. This is one of the steps that is somewhat controversial. Some directors refuse to listen to the work. Others find as many different recordings as possible. My typical tactic is to take it to the piano first, or sometimes to go to YouTube or the JW Pepper music company website for a performance.
5. Final selection if possible. In recent months, the steps up to this point would result in maybe one piece that fits my needs. In the event that more than one fits, it's a matter of determining which one I'd prefer to work on, or would appeal more to my students.
6. Repeat as needed. If I don't find any results, I pick a different resource from step 2 and go again. I may have to reach out to other teachers or other trusted musicians for further ideas.

Today, was a lucky day. My constraints were that I wanted pieces that were of moderate difficulty, but no more than three-part harmony. Ideally, the voicing would be TBB (Tenor, Baritone, Bass, meaning the middle voice is written in bass clef) because my guys will be sight-reading in that layout in the spring.

I wanted pieces that sound harder than they are, but that have tricky moments for us to work on. And above all, I want to be able to work particularly on tone. To be successful, we need a mature, masculine sound. And the sooner the better. Last year, we got the sound but it wasn't consistent enough and we lost it in performance.

My group sits in an odd spot in the choral world. Most serious, demanding men's choir music is in four parts (TTBB). My group is too small to do that consistently, so I prefer to keep them in three. But a lot of three-part music is written for junior high men. These tend to be too high for high school guys to be comfortable. They also tend to be cheesy and boyish.

Today, I found three pieces that fit my needs! On top of an arrangement of The Star-Spangled Banner, that will give us almost all of our fall music taken care of. It only leaves me with about 6 pieces left to pick for the rest of the year. Those can wait, though.

When I luck out like that, I get really excited. Quality music that fits my guys is rare. I don't want to spoil the surprise in writing, but feel free to send me a message and ask me what I found and I'm happy to share!

Rachmaninoff Preludes and Etudes-Tableaux

In between practicing for my piano lesson today, I listened through the collection of Rachmaninoff Preludes and Etudes-Tableaux that was in the picture on my Instagram yesterday.

I found a recording on Spotify of Vladimir Ashkenazy playing all of Rachmaninoff's piano works, and I used that as the basis. The score was the Dover edition of the complete preludes and etudes-tableaux.

I've never spent much time on Rachmaninoff. Before today, my familiarity with his work was limited to the knowledge that he was a late romantic/early modern Russian virtuoso pianist and composer, and that he had large hands (as made fun of here, but seriously the story is that he could reach a 13th).

I had a passing familiarity with the Prelude in G minor (Op. 23, No. 5) because I believe I worked on it briefly in college.

Because of that, and because his second piano concerto is widely regarded as one of the most demanding pieces of piano literature, I had this idea that most everything was going to be big chords and bombast. I figured that dense chords would be all over the place.

I was not surprised, therefore, to see a stretch of physically unplayable chords (by any normal person anyway) at the end of the first prelude (Op. 23, No. 1 in F Sharp Minor)

Those left hand chords are virtually impossible to reach with a normal hand span.

I spent a few moments trying to sort out how one might play those so in order to get the majority of notes to sound, but also to maintain the feeling of single, blocked chords (my initial impulse would be to break up the chord, but that changes the feeling entirely).

Overall, I wasn't terribly impressed with the Op. 23 etudes though. They were virtuosic and challenging, but seemed somehow empty too. There wasn't a strong sense of artistic identity somehow.

Moving on to Op. 32, though, was markedly different. My favorite piece that I listened to the of the whole day was Op. 32, No. 3. I can't say why now, but I know I made a note to that effect when I was writing down spur of the moment notes. I went back to listen again, but it didn't strike me quite the same, though I did still enjoy it more than those around it.

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I listened to these in opus order, which means chronologically. I discovered after the fact that I missed the Prelude in C-sharp minor, which was written and published ahead of time:

• Ten Preludes, Op. 23 (1901-1903)
• Thirteen Preludes, Op. 32 (1910)
• Eight Etudes-Tableaux, Op. 33 (1911)
• Nine Etudes-Tabluex, Op. 39 (1916-1917)

There is definitely a growing sense of command of the piano as the pieces progress. Notwithstanding the increased complexity of the Etudes-Tableaux compared to the Preludes, they simply feel more natural somehow.

I didn't dig into the analysis of these pieces enough to add anything lengthy here, but here's some trivia about the Etudes-Tableaux: The original set of 8 contained 9, but the work in A minor was removed. It was later rewritten and added into the second set.

The use of the word "tableaux" implies that there are not only technical challenges, but images inspiring these works. Rachmaninoff did not put titles at the beginnings of the pieces, but when Ottorino Respighi orchestrated them, Rachmaninoff gave him some guidance, so the orchestrated versions do have titles.

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I'll conclude this post with a few random thoughts.

First, on the performance. Rubato is technique that involves slight variations in tempo for expressive purposes. It's less employed now than it would have been during Rachmaninoff's day, but there's plenty to be found in these performances. Many of the tempo swings are practical in nature, allowing the pianist to get from one end of the keyboard to another, or for a large chord to diminish enough for the rapid moving notes after it to be heard.

But sometimes I get annoyed by the fact that this distorts the sense of meter in the piece. In rhapsodic pieces such a these, it's not so important, but it's a pet peeve of mine.

Finally, and in a very weird twist, there's a moment right at the end of Etude-Tableau Op. 33 No. 5 that must have inspired a melody in "Pink Elephants on Parade" from "Dumbo"

From Etude-Tableaux Op. 33, No. 5. Both hands are in bass clef.

Try playing the upper staff of this and see if you don't immediately sing "What'll I do?/What'll I do?/What an unusual view"!

Overall I'm glad I listened to these and I really enjoyed the experience. I highly recommend them.

A Quick Note

I don't really have anything new to say today, so this post is here to keep my streak going as much as anything else.

But I've been doing some thinking about what's being posted here, and I have determined that as long as I have this blog posted on a site connected to my professional work, I need to keep the topics relevant to that.

So look for more posts on the subject of shows I'm working on, piano progress, teaching, or organ gigs.

This should be the last meta post for awhile.

The Search for Meaning

I've finally reached the point in the summer where I feel like I've totally unwound from school and my summer plans, so I'm looking ahead to what I want to do going forward.

Among the many things on my mind today is the idea of continuing to learn piano repertoire. As I've been learning solo music for my collegiate auditions, I have also become more interested in the breadth of standard piano repertoire that I never explored.

When I say "standard" I mostly mean the small-to-medium length Romantic works by composers like Chopin, Brahms, and Liszt. When I was in college, I wouldn't give them the time of day, and in fact, until fairly recently I remained uninterested. But since digging into a Chopin nocturne, I have come to understand how he is creating his effects, and I'm more receptive to them as a result.

Today, I have the day mostly off, other than a recital this evening, so I have spent much of today listening and playing through piano repertoire. For example, this morning I listened through about half of the collection "The Library of Modern Piano Music" with mixed results. Most notably: I have no interest in playing anything by Ludovico Einaudi, a rather trendy new-age style composer.

In the afternoon, I listened through a few works by Tobias Picker, and I have been playing through my books of Christmas arrangements. As I go, I make notes on whether I am interested in learning, preparing, or perfecting the piece, or whether it holds no interest at this time.

Now that I have seen how my taste evolves, I'm not writing anything off totally, but I'm trying to find some direction for myself as the fall approaches.

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Before I pick up anything new, though, I have a concert tonight! I'm performing with The Woodlands Chamber Music Project, a group I helped found along with my friend John Paddie. I'm playing a piece by Kevin Olson, and a movement from Francis Poulenc's sonata for Flute and Piano. I hope to be able to do more collaborative work in the future.