Eph Ely
• Ensemble – is a reflection of life itself. We behave the same way in the community
• Music- our great gift to human kind
• Ally Herman
• NO WASTED WORDS – if you talk it is all important
• Never give your choir a bad thought
• Seating – break into quartets lightest voices are a 1 through darkest voices
o These groups sit together like so:
o CONDUCTOR
o 1 2
o 3 4
o 5 6 etc
• Tone Quality-
o Ask the choir what is good tone quality
• ANS:
Natural – almost no human uses his natural voice
Free – no tension
Vibrant - color
• Ask questions…don’t tell
• Vibrato- we allow intensity vibrato, not pitch changing vibrato
o Vibrato is DIRECTLY RELATED TO DYNAMICS
o P(none) – FFF ( everything!)
• Sound – travels in all directions with equal intensity
o We can direct our own sound to focus in any one direction
• But what we want is for it to travel freely in all directions
o Speak all that you can – FULLER
o If there is a problem it is that the sound is too far forward – Take it out of the mouth
• REUSE THESE CONCEPTS UNTIL THEY BECOME THERE OWN!
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• Attitude is the most important thing in rehearsal
o Must walk in with a positive attitude
• Ensemble – say it together – LOVE Connection is SO important
• Break Down inhibitions
•
• there is nothing more captivating to humans than another human
o the face is the most important part
• Weston Nobel, Paul Selmonovitch – look up
• V.S. – Robert Shaw, Rodger Wagner – believed in the stravinksian idea that if you just sing the right notes than the music will make itself
o This philosophy is detrimental – personality and expression are lost. This is a reason why music ed has been dropped from schools
o Aristotle and Plato express how important music is
o
• Listen- Charles buffy – KC chorale – he selects the exact voices that he wants and gets a beautiful sound\
• Unless you are working with a professional group your goal is to teach how to live through music
• John finny Williams
• LOOK FOR WHAT IS NOT IN THE SCORE!
o Don’t give up the spiritual
• Philosphy – conduct your imagination
• Life- Something happens and then things change
o His worst student – “he needed me and I didn’t know it”
• ALL people want to do a good job
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• Vibrato – in with the dynamics
o Should not have anything to do with pitch
o And can only happen with support
• ALWAYS work with voice teachers if there is a straight tone section be very sensitive
•
• BLEND
o We accept blend DON’T force it
• Don’t teach just share
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• Diction
o Philosophy – consonants explode
• Be able to separate consonants and vouels
• Use the Assembly line metaphor – you never want the sound to stop
• Dynamics
o Philosophy – MF – is normal speaking voice
• Mp – one degree less
• P more held back (NOT SOFTER!) – make a circle with your arms and let is spin only in that space
• Pp – as soft as you can sing – 3 times sing until you stop making sound… on the 3d time hold right before you run out
• F- one degree more
• FF – all you can give
Eph
• Don’t tell students to imitate, let them discover it on there own!
• George Lynn – took over Westminster after JF williamson, John Finy Williamson – founded Westminster
• Eph’s DMA – chose 25 new American composers and then asked the composrs how they wanted their works interpreted. Almost all said they welcomed any interpretation!!
• RVW – wrote an article on bach interpretation
• Affective: are you helping that singer…are you improving their life??
ACDA/MENC – to focused on perfection…prior to 50’s all choral hero's were teachers not performers
• People now try to imitate the performers (SHAW!)
• Now emphasis in ACD
• A is on performance (not education)
o We perform for each other because other people don’t care!
• This is NOT music for the greater good
•
• Music – calms the restless…stimulates the lazy
• Look for what is not in the score/ what is the message?!
• Every song has a story, if it doesn’t it is not worth doing
o Make it passionate to you, and then share that passion with your singers
• 99% of young conductors go to fast…and then cut off too soon
• There is no perfect way to conduct a score
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• Teach people how to think!
o He turned off all the lights….Socrates
o Life is but a shadow ---shot starter pistol
• THE SCORE IS BUT A SHADOW—of the original inspiration –the closest way to walk in the composers shoes
• Takes weeks to build something beautiful, a moment to destroy it
• Socratic method – all he did was ask questions!
•
EPH LUNCH
• Get a choir of your own!
• Pick a good program, know music. Alternate slow/fast
o Lots of variation
• Get excited about the music and share that enthusiasm!
o Develop program:
• CD’s
• Quirky dres
• Booster club/tour
• Start working east
• Not DMA – once you get it NO high school
•
Zelenski
• Shows music with body
• Look in the eyes (window of the soul)
• More vertical plane
• Will completely stop conducting to listen
• Choir always hums pitches before starting
• Speaks/yells at them while singing
• Little verbal encouragement
SHAMES!
• Conduct it like you are playing it
• Show completely what sound, color, feeling you want!!
• Conduct much smaller so that you can hear!!!
• Practice the music one line at a time and then add lines
• Work on the moving parts—think about their relationships
• Where do the individual phrases go?
• Work dynamics after phrasing
• Drop arm freely – have Emma catch
• Bounce arm
• SHAMES REHEARSAL
o Widens arms and mirrors retardation's…accell
o To start – one hand like a stop sign,,, baton ready, hits downbeat with both hands
o Left hand fingers mold sound like clay
o Players rely play with feeling!!
o Follows singers using a much smaller pattern
o Rely's on the singers to give phrasing to the orchestra
o Tells soloists to put words on there solo – it must have meaning!!
Dr. Boers
- What do we hear/see?
- What do they have in common
- causes
- RX:
- Describe (tell, listen, try)
- Do (kinesthetic)
- Imagine (affective)
- Conducting - work on phrasing, showing
- what you want
- sing the lines with phrase that you want
- show beats weight in arms
Eph Ehly
- History
- Haydn - 12 masses, 6 early, 6 late
- creation - long, cut the end
- Elijah has the same problems
- If you cut music you must tell the soloists before they agree
- Hydan went to a Handel festival in England and heard 1,000 performers
- 600-of them were performers
- Decides to write an oratorio for himself (creation)
- CREATION
- opens with a void -- C's
- Oral exams - know a typical/atypical for each period
- Renaissance
- in the Renaissance Sacred music influences secular music
- Popular forms
- Motets
- sacred text, a capella, Latin, through composed
- Madrigal
- English/Italian
- Eng - fa la la sections
- Chanson
- Lied
- Mass
- Anthem
- full anthem
- normal
- verse anthem
- more like a cantata
- atypical Renaissance music would be like Gabreilli - Timor et Timor
- Has Baroque and Romantic aspects LISTEN TO THIS!
- Most important Renisance composers
- Palestrina
- wrote 105 masses, composed for the Sistine chapel. Did not have more than 16 singers
- starts one voice, then the next
- arch form.. attention always going to the main line
- A typical Renaissance work would be a Palestrina Motet
- De Lasso
- wrote 1200 motets
- does not adhere to the rules as much as Palestrina
- lived mostly in Munich - had 60 instrumentalists...who would double the singers
- Byrd
- English
- wrote 3 masses - 3 voice, 4 voice, 5 voice
- broke the rules more than Palestrina
- (Des Prez)- important...but not as much as the others- Martin Luther described him as "the master of the notes"
- A good book to buy - Choral Music of the Church
- Baroque
- very angular
- lots of little motifs
- add's
- Cantata
- Lutheran invented, adds a commentary
- Oratorio
- tells a story, a concert piece
- Music of the Renaissance 0 Gustav reese - READ the Norton Series for each period
- H. Schutz (Dr. Ehly's fav. Baroque composer (i think))
- lived in Dresden Germany
- Studied with Monteverdi
- Has books of Italian Madrigals (listen!)
- writes a German requiem
- where Brahms got the idea
- Lived during the 30 years war
- 1/3 of the population died in the war
- 1/3 died from the plague
- Writes positive and uplifting music
- wrote 3 passions (1665) in the old style
- Geistliche Chor Muizic
- 27 motets in this set (1648)
- Das ist je gewisslich war (this is absolutly the truth)
- Analyze this piece and see how ist relates to the baroque
- Christmas story cantata
- His passions led to Bach's passions
- In France they invented the petite motet
- very similar to an anthem
- Also was the Grabe Motet
- much like a cantata
- The B minor mass was MUCH grander than anything that came before it
- England - invents the ODE
- Purcell wrote a few of these
- Classical/Romantic
- adds
- Choral Symphony
- Opera Chorus (?)
- Folk song Arrangements
- Spain - vill anticols (musico illogico)
- 20th Century
- adds
- Vocal Jazz
- spiritual
- text comes from the old testament
- comes from rural areas
- Gospel
- text comes from the gospels
- born in urban settings
- William Dawson - 1st black musician to graduate from UMKC
- didn't like the work spirituals, preferred Negro folk songs
- Jester Harison
- Dr. Ehly - would take his Choral lit class to the Art museum so that they could experience the paintings of the time
- elements of art:
- in painting: line, color, form, space
- music (they directly correlate): line=melody, color=harmony, form= form, space=rhythm
- How to memorize - would give his conductors a score...then 5 min to write down as much as they could
- used this to figure out how they memorized
- encourage singers to cast away inhibitions (this is what we are fighting in rehearsal)
- make yourself an instrument for the composer to speak through
- The goal is to walk in another man's shoes NOT to just entertain
- Have you ever stopped to think of music as a magic link, to god- poem...find.
- Where do we learn the difference between consonance and dissonance....what is right and wrong with chords etc?
- Luther: next to the word of God, music is the most important thing
- When conducting: we want the maximum result with the minimum effort
- Human Beings respond for four things (in this order of importance)"
- Theology
- Philosophy
- Emotion
- Action
- Conducting class - when teaching his students would always be evaluating/critiquing the student that Eph worked with
- Conduct the bottom three rows of the conducting sheet
- bring in Brahms create in me a pure heart
- Give music time to mature...dont go to fast!
- Conduct your imagination
- conducting is much more a mater of what to leave out (or let go, in rehearsal) than what not to
- singers must express from day one
- find, for them, the original source of inspiration
- Elijah - Mendelssohn
- 1723 - Jew in Germany, very much persecuted...lived in Ghettos
- Mosses Mendelssohn (Mendel's Son)
- parents snuck him out of the ghetto and he walked to Berlin to study with a Rabi
- learned many different languages and became a very smart man, eventually wealthy
- a leading philosopher of his day
- Had a child, who were the parents of Felix Mendelssohn
- Was a very kind and gentle man
- never fully realized how talented his was. Goethe said that he was a better musician than Mozart
- Our job is to bring these old people back to life. Find their source of inspiration and share it with you singers
- Performance practice MUST relate to the present moment. If you are not conveying something than it is meaningless
- WE ARE IN THE BUSINESS OF HELPING PEOPLE NOW
Dr. Shames lesson
- work 2 pattern with a metronome
- watch elbow
- beat= the length of the smallest note vale
- conduct for someone, changing the length of the beat... then try and get them to syncopate
- 2 to 1, 1-2
- change pulse, 4/4 to 6/8
- play with light to heavy bounce
- vertical will speed up
- horizontal with slow down
- all sounds are upbeats
- Try to listen in different ways
- conduct on a table
- watch POSTURE
- practice with baton in fingers
- relax in the wrist.. watch beat
- Dont sing AT ALL when conducting, hear
Dr. Shames lesson
- Conduct it like you play it
- show,completely, what sound, color, feeling you are after
- practice the music one line at a time adding slowly
- hear the moving parts...there relationships
- where do the individual phrases go? whats the relationship?
- worry about dynamics later, phrase 1st
- drop arm freely, have emma catch it (exercise)
- more bounce in arm
- widens arms and mirrors for a RIT
- to start the piece one hand is like a stop sign, baton ready...hits the plane with both hands and goes
- left hand fingers mold the sound like clay
- players really express what they are feeling
- follows singers when they come in, relie on the singer to give the phrasing
- instructs his soloists to put words on the solo.... does not matter what. it just must have meaning
Dr. Shames lesson 2/27
- Dog ear the pages the opposite way when you hear a mistake
- keep working to strike the beats in the same plane
- work big to small...small to big (PRACTICE)
- Beat with the right hand, and do something completely different with the left.
- More RELAXED pattern
- Remember THEY are doing the work
- Dont tighten the jaw
- stand up straight
- Watch Simon Rattle
- little facial movement, lots of eyes
- Work with a metronome
- play on the piano, one line at a time
- Work 4 pattern
- hear all beats
- Hit and drop -- DONT push into the beat (causes it to rush)
- Spend more time with a metronome
- final beat needs to be much more delicate
- Hear the music before you start it...then your upbeat is always right in time
- work on the natural fall of the arm
- let your ears conduct, do not worry about the gesture...focus on how you hear it
- Memorize your music - they NEED your eyes (and ears)
- Practice all tempo changes in time first, after this it will be very easy to accelerate or Rit.
Peter Eklund
- Critiques
- beats on the same plane, same place
- Stand up straight
- use "hand shake" level beats
- In rehearsal
- begins working by making notes in the score
- conducts from the piano
- identifies vowel problems
- picks to singers and has the sing with you to explain the importance of uniformity
- disects all words into IPA form an then places them in the same place
- speaks the words to correct vowel problems
- when 3rd is out of tune
- has them hold chord, if your are singing the 3rd, hear the root
- Color cotes his score
- Breath -
- 1/3 front
- 1/3 sides
- 1/3 back
- Does not allow choir to sing past mistakes
- not all sylables are created equal
- has them exagerate, then creates a flow
Eph Ehly
- Why verse how
- how will always change
- why stays the same
- Living to learn, learning to teach, teaching to learn how to live
- singers must take ownership of the music
- pitch - eeryone has pich problems
- caused by lack of enthusias, disire, etc.
- Pitch - one person sings the pitch, the other moves around
- put heads together, feel vibrations
- the brain wont except anything but the correct pitch, think it first
- this gets them to hear without singing
- when you have your own choir spend a week with each idea, that effects choral sound (pitch, diction, etc.)
- break up the normal rehearsal process
- make the focal poin the music not you
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