There is nothing worse in a choir director’s experience than having nothing to work on at the moment. If you ask, you will hear things from those who will be honest enough to tell you. Ask me what I did. Schedule a passion prayer session, that’s it! And that’s terrible. When you have to turn your choir into a prayer squad, you have a crisis on your hands. Or soon you will.
Get a photo of those who come to choir practice these days. They are not too pious. They constitute the excited ones, in general. So don’t be fooled into thinking they will enjoy praying as much as you do. It bores them crazy. They don’t want to pray. They came to sing and sing, you will have to make them do it.
What else do choir directors do when they run out? You write your own song and present it the same day. There you go. So many things would not have been taken care of in this short time. The song would be too simple, too short. Harmony too weak, too cumbersome. The progression too absurd or absent. Now imagine what it would look like, appearing before a 40-voice choir in this situation. If they are from the city where I live, two-thirds of them will not attend the next choir practice. No one wants to sing a broken piece, regardless of the composer’s intent. Do everything you want in your secret place and show yourself more than clever. That’s when you’re ready to lead. Weave the song together. Plum with rough edges. Get the music flowing. It draws the musicians ahead. Then work with your vocalists. Come to your choir with a done deal. They will respond in tandem. Otherwise, you have a raw show.
Anyway, let’s talk about the things that keep your choir mill going throughout the year: Materials. With the materials you have something on the lectern every week. They provide you with the preparation items. So, a wise choirmaster gets music literature, music audios and videos. And to these he adds extensive scores, from baroque oratorios to contemporary gospel scores. It is not the other way around (scores, then literature and the rest). Nope! Literature first, followed by others.
Literatures do two things: first they inspire you; second, they round you out, expanding your field of appreciation. By way of illustration, if you read GF Handel’s story before starting work on Messiah, at least two things happen to you instantly. First, you learn to make an independent but informed decision before doing the job, just like every other director before you. You tend to feel no less than anyone who has done the job in the last two and a half centuries, thus assuming a resolve. Second, you are inspired to write your own works, setting the scriptures to music. These twin concepts, education and inspiration, are a fundamental resource in choral management. No choir director or choir teacher can afford to do without them.
Now, your choir has to make a song that borders on jazz, and you’ve sifted through the literature from which you’ve extracted the four elements of jazz: blue notes, syncopation, improvisation, and the uniqueness of altered timbre—so you’re done. You are ready to listen to the audio. Your mind is ready to listen. The doors of your mind have a less rigorous job to do by listening. You realize that observation is for the prepared mind. The man who has no idea what he wants to do stays alert for nothing, because when his target passes by, he wouldn’t even notice. You’re better, aren’t you? You know when you hear what you’ve been waiting to hear. And you fix it. You pause the record player and repeat that line over and over again, until you get it right.
