Category Archives: Probationer Training

The Regensburger Domspatzen

Choir Schools, Chorister Training, Discipline, Music for the Liturgy, Probationer Training, Sight-Singing, Uncategorized

The city of Regensburg, Germany (also know as Ratisbon), is beautiful on many accounts, not the least of which is the Cathedral of St. Peter and its famous choir, the Regensburger Domspatzen (literally “the Regensburg Cathedral Sparrows”), which celebrated its 1000 anniversary in 1975.  Msgr. Georg Ratzinger, brother of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, directed the choir for 30 years (1964-1994), since which time Roland Buechner has held the baton.  I would like to highlight this choir today for a number of reasons as we discuss the choir school in general and its role in the ongoing efforts to celebrate the Roman Rite in a worthier manner.

The choir at Regensburg is set up according to what I call the German model, meaning that while boys still form the treble lines, high school boys (I believe up to 19 years of age in the case of Regensburg) sing the lower parts in the choir, as apposed to the English tradition of having profession men, or university level choral scholars sing those parts.  The choir’s sound tends toward a judicious use of vibrato (a continental sound) as opposed to a straight tone (an English sound), and the backbone of the choir’s repertoire, like that of Westminster Cathedral, is polyphony and chant.  At the same time, the choir sings much religious music in the German tradition as well as German folk music and art songs, which they perform in concerts across the world.  If you speak German, there is a wonderful video series about the choir on YouTube with a decent amount of footage of actual vocal instruction being given to new choristers, which I have found helpful.

I would like to point out that while this choir is world class, I nevertheless feel that the quality of the singing is not at the level of Westminster Cathedral (this causes me incredible anguish because I have an unyielding passion for all things German) simply because it does not sing together in public as often as the choir as Westminster does (the choir at Regensburg sings for Mass on a more weekly basis).  The fact that Westminster usually perfects a polyphonic Ordinary and Gregorian Propers along with choral Vespers most days of the week brings about an incredible cohesion among all of its singers. Regardless, I would still love to see a choir of this quality in every major Catholic church in America.

Finally, I make my usual plea to all pastors, principals and musical directors to give the choir school a chance at your parish.  Think of how much good you could do if every child graduating from your school grew up  with Gregorian chant, simpler polyphony and good solid hymns as part of their spiritual formation.  Change the way they pray and you will change the way the believe!

Durham Cathedral Choir

Choir Schools, Choral Vespers, Chorister Training, Probationer Training, Sight-Singing

The choir at Durham Cathedral traces its routes back long before the English Reformation, more than 900 years in fact.  Durham was originally a monastery where boys sang the treble line.  Today the Cathedral Choir includes both a boys choir and a girls choir, which, as is often the case, split the services between the two, while lay clerks sing the lower parts for each group.  The choristers are educated at the Chorister School, found in the cathedral precinct.  In all, another typical English cathedral choir set-up.  So… what gem of information can be gleamed from Durham?

If one visits the Chorister School website (specifically the music page), one will find that almost all of the students at the school (far more than just the choristers) are involved in music to some extent.  Almost all learn some piano and sing in some kind of choir.  I bring this up to refute an argument that has been brought up to me before, namely, that by creating one very select choir within an institution, one denies all the other children in the school the legitimate right to make music to a high degree (being forced to sing on the B-Team as it were).  Instead, I have found that having one select choir that sings to an incredibly high standard encourages the other choral groups in the school to sing at much high levels than usually thought possible because those students in the secondary choral groups have a tangible standard toward which they can strive.  A high tide raises all boats. This always students to sing in a choir commiserate to their musical abilities.  All in all, wonderful thing!  If you run a parochial Catholic school, why don’t try this model for your music program.  YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOOSE!

Here is an archive recording of Choral Evensong from Durham Cathedral.  I post this rather than a recording of an individual work because of my love for Anglican psalmody.  I hope you enjoy!

 

Bertalot’s 5 Wheels (Part 2 of 2)

Choir Schools, Chorister Training, Discipline, John Bertalot, Probationer Training, Sight-Singing

In part 1 of 2 of this post, I covered the first 3 of Bertalot’s 5 Wheels to Successful Sight-Singing. In this post I cover the last 2 wheels.

Wheel Four-Theory and Practice Bertalot writes “Every theoretical point must be made practical and vice versa. Sing what that see, see what they sing.” In the very first rehearsal when you draw a staff and treble clef on the board to explain what they mean, you must then make it practical by putting music in front of the choristers and asking them to explain it. When you draw the first note on the board and teach them that it is a G, you must then have them sing it. Then put a piece of music in front of them and ask them how many Gs they can find. This must happen with every concept you teach them.

Wheel Five-Steer the Car As Bertalot points out, the most important wheel on a car is the steering wheel, and the choir director needs to have a firm grip on that wheel. A lot of this deals with discipline in the choir room. If you have good discipline in the classroom, teaching your choristers will be much easier. Bertalot says “The children must learn quickly to respond to what I say. They must realize that I mean everything I tell them. Children need boundaries within which they can work. If they learn that you don’t really mean what you say, they won’t know where they are, and they’ll call the shots. From the children’s very first practice on, they need to know that the boundaries are there to help them achieve the great things that I have in store for them.” Go out and Steer the car!

Bertalot’s 5 Wheels (1 of 2)

Chorister Training, John Bertalot, Most Pure Heart of Mary Schola Cantorum, Probationer Training, Sight-Singing

In my previous post on John Bertalot’s 5 Wheels to Successful Sight-Singing, I wrote about the Great Secret, namely, “every moment of all practices must be geared to sight-singing.”  Today I would like to write about the Five Wheels themselves (the actual 12 steps he outlines on how to teach sight-singing come after the Five Wheels, so please be patient).  I will list them below with a little commentary following each wheel (Bertalot compares these to the wheels of an automobile.  You will see in the next post where the 5th wheel enters).

Wheel One-Passion  It sounds rather like a cliche to write that one needs to have passion for what one does, but it is true.  If you are going to teach your choir to sight-sing, it has to be an obsession with you.  This determination will force you to make decisions about what your choir will sing and how you will teach those pieces of music.  If you don’t make this an over-riding priority you will not succeed at it.  I have personally reached the point where I am not willing to compromise on this issue with my choristers, even if it means cancelling a motet they don’t have time to learn by sight.  I will not go back and you mustn’t either.

Wheel Two-Small Groups  Bertalot believes that ideally one would teach one student at a time (he feels that two students take twice as long to teach as one student) so that no chorister falls through the cracks or get by using another chorister as a crutch, however, he takes four students at a time because of time constraints.  I find this wheel difficult because the choir master never has enough time in his day and training 10 new singers individually doesn’t fit into his schedules.  I currently have 13 new students that I see as a group, and while it goes much slower with this many students, it is what works for my schedule.  You will have to figure this out for yourself, but smaller is better.

Wheel Three-Teach One Step at a Time  I remember the exact rehearsal with my choristers when I finally slowed down enough (I wanted my kids to sound like Westminster Cathedral as soon as possible) that I taught only one concept at a time and made them figure out the music on their own.  We made it through only 4 measures of a new hymn in 15 minutes (unison only), but those minutes flew past and every child was thoroughly engaged and enjoying himself.  It was great!  So… what did it look like?  First they figured out the key and time signatures, then they clapped the rhythm until they had it right. Next, they sang through the hymn in solfege without worrying about rhythm.  Then they put pitch and rhythm together, after which they added text.  It sounds tedious (and it is), but two years later it goes much faster.

Another thing to remember is not to skip important steps or concepts you take for granted. Think of the grand staff.  How many directors teach the staff as having 5 lines?  That is true, but only half true.  The staff also has 4 spaces, which are just as important as the lines.  You would be amazed how long it takes to stick in the minds of some choristers that the scale moves from line to space (or vice versa), rather than line to line (rarely ever do they think it moves from space to space).  Make sure you are teaching only one step at a time and that your steps build one on another in a logical sequence.  And don’t skip important concepts!

George Guest

Choir Schools, Chorister Training, Discipline, George Guest, Probationer Training, Sight-Singing

I found an old interview today with George Guest, one of the greatest conductors in the English Cathedral choral system in the 20th century.  His comments range from the nuts and bolts of running a world famous choir school to the state of church music as he saw.  I would like to share a few quotes for the benefit of the reader.

Regarding the voice trial at St. John’s:

“As far as the little boys are concerned, we have, each year in early January, a voice trial.  It’s rather like a cattle auction.  If you were to go through the courts of Saint John’s College on the first Saturday of January, you’d see a lot of ladies clutching the hands of small boys, all with freshly combed hair and brushed shoes, wearing their best suits and carrying miniature violins and miniature cellos with them.  They would be coming to the Saint John’s choristers trial.  We have about thirty or forty of these boys each year, for about, on average, four places.  They come up to my rooms in college and they’re all just a little nervous, although it’s true to say that the parents are more nervous than are the children.  They are given some arpeggios so that one can listen to the sound they make and for quality of their voices.  We give them ear tests.  We give them two- and three-part chords, and they have to pick out the middle note or the bottom note or the top note of these.  We hear them play their instrument, and quite a lot of them, in fact, play two instruments.”

I do believe that all children should be given a very fine musical education.  At the same time, it is essential that we have choral institutions singing to the highest standards, which ultimately raises the choral bar for everyone.

Of special importance in this paragraph was his description of how he chose future probationers.  The examiners looks for a beautiful tone as well as a good ear and musical potential. I have also found that asking a possible probationer to read a piece of prose is very important.  I can’t prove this in any scientific manner, but in my experience a child who reads well seems to learn to read music much faster.

Regarding where he believes sacred music is going today:

“Well, I don’t know.  That’s such a wide question; it’s almost like the title for a dissertation of a master of literature or even a Ph.D. three years thesis.  I don’t know where it’s going!  It depends not so much on the musicians as on the church itself, and on those who are constantly bringing out new liturgies and addressing the almighty in terms of familiarity, which they would not dare to use either to the Queen or even to Mrs. Thatcher!  This is the trouble.  If you have a new liturgy, it does presuppose the fact that you’ve got to have new settings.  We at Saint John’s don’t come under any bishop at all, so we can do exactly as we like, exactly as our dean likes, or our college council.  We tend to be old-fashioned because we’ve found amongst young people at the university that they largely resent the innovations that are going on in the United States as well as in England.  They think that they’re being patronized.  They feel that all this business of addressing the almighty in everyday, modern language, and all the other gimmicks that are used in church services — like guitars and dancing and all the rest of it — are rather pathetic attempts to increase congregations.  We have found most definitely that young people are now turning back towards dignity in worship, and they dislike the feeling that they are being patronized.  I suppose it may well be thus in a changing and often frightening world.  Lots of young people are frightened.  They’re frightened by the rulers of the United States as much as they are frightened by the rulers of Great Britain.  They’re frightened by the possibility of a nuclear war.  They’re frightened by the rulers of Russia.  They wonder if they will ever be able to live a full life such as their fathers and grandfathers did, or whether they’ll reach the age of three score years and ten.  In this frightening and turbulent world, it’s as if they’re turning back to something which has the appearance of stability.  So church services, with a fresh gimmick each week, are not things which have, to the modern young mind, any kind of stability at all.  I may be wrong in all this, but you put the question to me and that’s the best way I can answer it.”

Dr. Guest said this thirty years ago and I believe it is even more true today.  I pray more and more people realize this.

 

The Choir of St. John’s College, Cambridge

Choir Schools, Chorister Training, Discipline, Probationer Training

The Choir of St. John’s College, Cambridge, currently under the direction of Andrew Nethsingha, is one of the great collegiate choir in the world, although a relative newcomer to the choral scene.  The choir began in the late 17th century, but it was not until the 20th century that its reputation rose to international status, thanks to Dr. George Guest, the choir’s director from 1951 to 1991.  In one way St. John’s is similar to King’s (both in Cambridge).  Boys form the treble line while college undergraduates sing alto, tenor and bass.  On the other hand, the choral sound is very different.  King’s tends toward a very pure, strait tone (veddy English and veddy Anglican) while St. John’s sings with a more continental tone (think more along the lines of Westminster Cathedral and a prudential use of vibrato), introduced by Guest.  I personally like St. John’s sound very much.

Lastly, I want to write a few things about George Guest (I could write a year’s worth of posts about him).  He had a legendary way of getting his choir to truly communicate text and music to the listener, as opposed to merely singing the piece.  I remember asking someone one (I can’t even remember who, but it was someone who had attended a workshop of Guest’s) how he did this and the man responded that he thought it was Guest’s wonderful, almost poetic command of language.  Guest knew how to communicate well in the spoken medium and was able to transfer this to St. John’s Choir as they sang.

There are two videos below from a two part series made about St. John’s in the late 1970s. There are plenty of clips of the choir as well as interviews with Guest.  Especially listen to Guest’s command of the English language in the beginning of the second video.  He knew how to use words.  Period.  Something more choir directors learn to do!

The Great Secret

Chorister Training, Discipline, John Bertalot, Probationer Training, Sight-Singing

Before I begin this week’s post, I want to make a correction to something I wrote last week regarding John Bertalot’s Practical Secret, namely, condition choirs so that you only have to tell them once.  I used the example of a chorister who is not listening when the director tells the choir where in the music they are to begin singing.  I made the point that you should not repeat your instruction, because then the choristers know they don’t have to listen the first time around–surely you will repeat it a second, and possibly a third time.  I wrote that one should instead plow forward so that the student has to figure it out on his own.  While it is true that one should not repeat the instruction a second time in the usual manner and then move on, it is, nevertheless, not true that one should move forward in the way I wrote (students who love choir, but struggle musically, or ones who know musical concepts well, but would rather be goofing off, usually won’t put forth the effort to catch up, which leads to much bigger problems) .  The afternoon after I posted the article, I stood in front of my choristers and that very example became reality, and I realized I needed to do things differently.  I gave the choir an instruction, but one student chose not to listen the first time I said it.  What I did is what is sometimes referred to in education circles as the “no opt out.”  When said student asked me to repeat what I had said, I looked to another student and asked the second student to repeat what I said.  Then (and this is absolutely important!!!) I returned to the original student and asked him to repeat the instruction so that he knew that I would not let him get away with sitting there.  It is amazing how well this works and it eliminates so many behavioral problems with choristers.  Alright, on to this week’s topic–The Great Secret.

Oh, what would it be like to hand my choristers a motet they had never seen and then lift my hands and go?  Oh wait, that is a bi-weekly occurrence in the Most Pure Heart of Mary Schola Cantorum (my group of choristers).  Last week I handed my choristers Victoria’s O vos omnes, which they will sing on Palm Sunday as well as during our 3 p.m. service on Good Friday.  This is how I began (the story you are about to read is true, but the names have been changed to protect the innocent!).

Me: Susie, what key are are we in?  You are correct, Bb minor.

I didn’t explain that Renaissance music could be sung in any key you liked or that we were really in a mode as opposed to a key.  I was just happy I had 4th through 8th grade students who were singing Victoria.  At this point I played the scale and chord structure of Bb minor and asked them to sing lah, which they did correctly (they knew that the minor began on lah).

Me: Choir, please sing lah. (I didn’t repeat lah for them after playing the scale.  They had to be able to figure it out on their own, which they did.)

Me: Johnny, what time signature are we in?  Yes, Johnny, we are in cut time.  Edward, what does that mean?  That is correct, it stand for 2/2.  Sarah, what does the top 2 mean and what does the bottom 2 mean?  Yes, the top number means two beats per measure and the bottom number means that the half note gets the beat.

Me: As we learn this piece, we will read it as if it were in 4/4 (this works best for my choristers as a whole).

Me: Sopranos and altos, I would like both parts to sing the alto line through measure 16 on solfege, one note at a time.  We will focus on rhythm later (be specific in your instructions!).

I asked both the sopranos and altos to sing because It was a good reading exercise for all the students (I did not play a single note on the piano to help them).  This didn’t go perfectly (70 percent the first time through).  I had to focus on a couple of the difficult leaps.  Next, both parts worked on the rhythm.

Me: Sopranos and altos, I would like both parts to clap the the rhythm and speak the beat of the alto line through measure 16 (all I did was establish the speed of the beat).

My choristers have a fairly good grasp on whole notes, halves and quarters so this line was not a problem (If the line had contained a dotted quarter note, I would have had to stop and make sure a few of the choristers were sure of this rhythm.)  At this point, I asked both parts to sing the line again, this time in correct rhythm.  Next, I repeated the process with the soprano line.  Lastly we put the two parts together, which they sang at about 90% accuracy (the entire process took only 5 minutes).  We spent 15 minutes on the piece and learned through sicut dolor meus (no Latin yet).  Not bad.

If I had taught this piece by rote, it would have taken the choir 15 minutes just to learn the first 16 measures (and they would have forgotten this before the next rehearsal).  I write all of this because it ties in to John Bertalot’s Great Secret: Every moment of all practices must be geared to sight-singing.  If you are going to teach your choir to sight-sing, you must be relentless (in a fun way) about it.  Yes, it takes a lot of time and effort in the beginning, but it pays off in the end.   Bertalot’s goal was to teach each chorister to read well enough that he or she could sing any of the choruses from Handel’s Messiah by sight after three years.  Now THAT is a time saver.  We will get to the how of teaching sight-singing later, but for now, MAKE THE DECISION TO TEACH YOUR CHORISTERS HOW TO READ MUSIC.  You AND your choristers will be grateful!

A Practical Secret

Chorister Training, Discipline, Probationer Training

Children can be very infuriating at times.  How often have you announced the name of the motet your choir will be rehearsing next and one of your choristers shouts out “What did you say?”  You repeat the answer to him and before your are finished, another chorister says “What was that?”  You think that is the end of it and you begin working on the motet, only to notice three children looking at you with blank stares.  When you ask them why they aren’t singing, invariably two of the three respond that they didn’t hear what you said (the third child tells you he never received a copy of the music, but on further investigation, you find that it is the very first piece of music in his binder, if only he had looked).  John Bertalot is correct when he says, “Choir directors have to repeat instructions because the choirs have trained their directors.  They have conditioned the director to accept their own low level of concentration so that everything must be said two or three times to enable everyone to hear and respond.  I am in charge of this choir and they do things in my way, not vice versa.”

I have always found that rehearsals that move along at a decent pace, with little wasted time (including me talking) are the best rehearsals.  More music is covered and choristers generally have a feeling of accomplishment.  They don’t like to sit around while I repeat instructions multiple times for the benefit of those with selective hearing (if I had told those choristers it was break time, every one of them would have heard it the first time and would have been out the door before I could repeat what I said).  So… how do you recondition your choristers?

As Bertalot writes “You first have to get their attention.  You may have to do this in the old way, by repeating your call for silence.  Then you tell them that from now on, when you tell them something you will do it only once.”  Then you have to stand by what you said–NO MATTER WHAT!  From personal experience, those choristers who never catch what you say will begin to ask their neighbor to repeat your instructions.  This is when you start rehearsing the work immediately so that their neighbors are all singing and can’t respond.  The chorister who didn’t hear you the first time will have to look at his neighbor’s music to find out where he should be.  If you keep this up, those choristers with selective hearing WILL begin to hear you the first time.  You will waste much less time and you will enjoy the new found energy of your rehearsals!

A Practical Secret: Condition choirs so that you have to tell them only once.

Next week: the Great Secret.

Patience, Patience, Patience

Discipline, Probationer Training

Several weeks I stood in front of 14 probationers (yes, that is too large a group, but more about that in another post) during our weekly rehearsal.  This lively bunch of 8 boys and 6 girls had been working hard, but knew they were nearing break time (the rehearsal is 2 hours long with a 10 minute break in the middle), and of course, there were a couple of boys who were getting restless (what boy wouldn’t in an after school rehearsal like this, right!).  I decided to take a moment to teach a lesson as well as impart some culture before the really important stuff–like snack time–began.  I started recounting a story from Hillaire Belloc’s Cautionary Tales for Children (If you have never read these stories, go to http://www.gutenberg.org/files/27424/27424-h/27424-h.htm and read them with your children TONIGHT!  They make for great, very politically INCORRECT bed time reading) about a boy named Jim and the importance of listening to those in authority.  I barely had time to tell them about “Jim, who ran away from his nurse” when a little girl got so excited that she stammered, “and, and…and he was eaten by a lion.”  No sooner had I told her that she was correct than another little boy shouted out “Hey, there’s a great story in there about a girl who burns to death.”  At this point, almost all of the boys began acting as if they were on fire and the girls had as much fun laughing as the boys did making them laugh.  I had lost all control–time for break!  True, my plan didn’t work, but hey, they knew about Hillaire Belloc.  I guess that Catholic culture is not completely dead!

     I bring this up because before you ever begin working with children you must realize that while it is fun, it can be overwhelming at times.  I have known people who began teaching music in the class room and within a couple of years decided they would rather work for a bank.  So, I tell you Patience, Patience, Patience in Adversity.  You will make it in the end!
     Lastly, as I begin blogging at The Art of the Chorister, I would like to fill in the reader on how I plan to post.  Monday and Thursday will be reserved for the main articles, Monday dealing with the practical aspects of children’s choirs and choir schools in general, and Thursday dealing with the practical aspects of sight-singing and ear training.  Tuesday will be a wild card day (my choice), Wednesday will be dedicated to listening to different choirs and Friday will finish the week with information on various choir schools.  Saturday and Sunday are for my family (you will have to wait until Monday).  I hope you enjoy reading these articles as much as I enjoy writing them.