Choral VS Orchestral Conducting

In today's episode, I will be answering a question posted on instagram - choral vs orchestral conducting.

The essence of all conducting is to convey your understanding of the music to influence and support the musicians' music-making.

When we have different ensembles, it's important to look at different needs of choral singers, and to adjust the height of your conducting gestures, and to show phrasing and support breathing.

All About Chaowen Ting 

Transcript

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Hello, hello, welcome back to the Conductors Podcast. In today's episode, I'm going to answer a question that was posted on Instagram, which is Coro VS Coro Orchestral Connecting. For those of you who didn't know, my first conducting experience was actually with a choir, which is probably similar to a lot of people, because choir is an easier accessible ensemble for anyone who is just starting to know or learn about this craft of connecting. When I was little, my mom used to direct a kids' choir at a nearby elementary school. So I would play piano for the kids' choir every week for many, many years. And then my mom went on to direct some amateur adult choir, and I would play for them as well. And in high school, I became the conductor of the school choir. There was a really prestigious choir competition between high schools in Taipei, where I grew up, and it was not allowed to have any teachers in the competition. So the conductor and the economist had to be a student. It's like a school sport team that the teachers are only allowed outside of the court. So I was selected into the school choir only because I was going to be a conductor. Because of that opportunity, there was a choral summer festival with the teacher who just got a degree in choral conducting from the United States who was returning back to Taiwan to teach choirs and choral conducting for the very first time in the history of the country that someone had a degree in choral conducting. So I went to the workshop and it was a two-week workshop that you are taught conducting techniques in the morning, you practice, and then in the afternoon you actually sing in the festival choir with San Baylor for nine on stage with the orchestra at the end of the festival. And that was my first encounter of learning to conduct as well. Now, with all this background, um, before we dive into the differences between choral and orchestral conducting, I actually wanted to start with the common ground. Some people might say there's actually no difference whether you are conducting a band, a choir, an opera, an orchestra. I think the essence is the same, which is true that we are conducting music or we are conducting music in a way that will influence your musicians. But because of the different um characteristics and specific needs of the ensemble, some modifications might be very useful. So as I just said, I think number one goal of conducting whether it's a choir or an orchestra, is first of all, you need to have great knowledge of the score. You need to learn and analyze and know the score at the best of your ability at any given moment. And the second next important thing is in conducting, your goal should be conveying your ideas about the score to your musician and help them realize your ideas and their understanding of the music together. A lot of people coming to me as a beginner conductor asking about, you know, conducting gestures, or how can I be more demanding, more authoritative on Napoleon, forgetting or without realizing that all of this should come from your solid understanding of the music. If you don't have good things to say and you're only asking, how can I say it better, then there's no substance, there is no content in the message in the message that you're trying to deliver, right? So, first of all, it has to be coming from a good understanding of the score at the best you can, because we are all evolving. Like when I'm looking at the score that I studied in my college years and my graduate study years, I found notes that didn't make sense anymore to me now, but it was how I could have understood this music back then, and I did my best. So, what I really, really wanted to emphasize is understand the score to the best of your knowledge at any given time. And then the next step is how I can translate my knowledge, my vision, and what I think would be the most cohesive, um, the closest to the composer's intentions to my musicians. That's number one. Now, it's the parts that translating or conveying or commuting your ideas to the musicians and helping them to realize this music together, that's tricky. First of all, let's think about the physicality of conducting a choir versus conducting an orchestra. If you don't have it already available to you, I would highly recommend having your choir either sitting or standing on a raised platform or a riser in front of you. Even if you don't have a raised platform available to you, your choir is usually sitting closer to each other and closer to you. So ideally, when a choir is standing in front of you, you can look directly into their eyes and they are singing towards your face or even from a slightly higher position from where you are. A lot of choral conductors, therefore, developed a habit of always conducting from your chase up or even conducting in front of your face because, for practical reasons, the musicians that you are conducting are right in front of you. But that default higher position will be really difficult for your orchestra members to see you, if they even do. We all know that orchestra musicians are usually really busy looking at their music, and they only feel you for the most part. If they are watching you, may that they raise their head up to look at you directly. It's very often during the beginning, the end, or the transitional passages where they need more indication of the temple changes or something that prompts them to look up to you. So that's the first thing that we want to think about is our platform of where the conducting baseline is. A lot of times when we are conducting a choir, that the whole platform is a lot higher as opposed to with orchestra because you're sitting lower than where you are, whether you are just standing or even standing on a podium, that you are naturally at a higher position. That is why when I'm conducting an opera, I actually switch my hands. So one hand is up for the stage singers, and the other hand is slower for the musicians in the pit. So I can coordinate rogue world that is on stage singing and acting and performing, and also the orchestra musicians that's in the pit that is much, much lower than usual because the pit podium is a lot higher to accommodate the height difference. The next thing that I wanted to touch on that I already hinted a little bit is the differences of the parts that your musician is reading from. The orchestral musician is only reading their part. So the violinists are only looking at the violin music, and the cellists like only looking at the cello parts. Your flutists will only look at flute one or two, whatever parts that they're assigned, except maybe for the percussionist who might be looking at three or five different parts at the same time. But you are the only person that is looking at the full score. As opposed to in the choir, very often the piano vocal score or the choral score has all the parts and the piano part. So they are looking at the same thing as you do. What that means to conducting is your orchestral musicians rely a lot more on knowing where you are by having clear indication of big patterns. If you're conducting a phrase, someone who is looking at a 33 bars of rest might get real loss not knowing where you are. Or if you're giving something to the clarinet line that has no real like direct relationship to the viola part, you're realist playing for six bars and waiting to change note at the seventh part might not know what's going on. So usually in orchestral conducting, we want to keep and preserve the beat pattern a lot more diligently as opposed to choral connecting. Because in a choir-only setting, your chorists are looking at the same thing. They do not need to know which part they are at. They can hear what's going on in other parts, they can see from the music. Oh, the lieutenant had enters here, we come in three beats after, or like now, here is the baseline, and I'm waiting until the bases finish this phrase, and then I'm coming in after as a coming point of the other part. So very often I have seen, and I have also done this myself as well, that a choral conductor would be conducting the phrases and indicating breath and phrasing instead of beating the beats or indicating which measure we are in. And that difference is mostly coming from catering to the different needs of your musicians in order to help and facilitate this music making journey. The next thing we want to think about is breathing and choral singing. Of course, breathing is important for all human beings and it's an essential part for music making in general. But when and where and how to breathe has a much more direct impact on choral singing than in orchestra playing in general. This has two implications. On one hand, when you are studying the score, it is extremely important to think through or even plan out where your acquired members might need to breathe and what kind of breath you can facilitate that. On the other hand, when we are talking about conducting gestures, you want to make sure that you are indicating those breaths. Of course, that's very often part of the phrasing, but to also prepare for big and important ones. Say, for example, there's a high or long phrase right after, so your singers need extra time to breathe better. Or more importantly, we talked about earlier that some choral conductors have a default higher position in conducting because they're conducting right in front of the face. That has a psychological impact on being tighter around the neck and throat for your singers. If you can find some sweet spot to lower your conducting platform to be a little bit lower and more supported and grounded, that will actually support your singer's diaphragm and help them to have a better and deeper breathing. To sum up what we have talked about in today's episode in choral versus orchestral conducting, first I wanted to emphasize once again that I think something is true in old conducting, which is conducting is a tool for us to translate our understanding of the music, our study of the score into a way of influencing our musicians' music making. Our job is to facilitate and support our musicians in the best ways we can ever find to realize the music that we have understood and then what they have viewed together and create something that is unified. When we are dealing with a choral score or anything that deals with text and singing, it's important that we look at the text and which we haven't talked about text preparation, but in conducting, we want to think through where and when they are going to need to breathe. When it comes to gesture, first we talked about how sometimes choral conducting can be higher in position because your choral members are sitting or standing right in front of you, as opposed to orchestra members, most of them are sitting much lower. The second part is orchestra musicians, because they are looking at only their part, they really need a lot more consistent and continuous beating, knowing which beat we are, which measure we're counting to. While in choral conducting, it can sometimes be useful to logo the bar lines and just to conduct a phrase, because your choral members have the chorus score right in front of them, and that is a lot easier for them to read from, and I mean gesture-wise, than one, two, three, four. But again, this really depends on the type of music that you're conducting and what your musicians need. Last thing we talk about is to facilitate breathing since it has such a strong impact on the music making of core members. You'll want to make sure that your gesture is supportive, indicating the big breaths. And also remember, don't stay up high all the time because that is not going to help your singers gain a deep, grounded breath. I hope you liked today's episode. If you think of any other questions about conducting that you'll want to ask, or if you want to share about certain topics, please feel free to reach out to me. I'm on Instagram with the handle the Conductors Podcast, or you can still send an email to the Conductorspodcast at gmail.com. Later this season, we will host a few giveaways since I have found some duplicate scores and books through my summer cleaning. So stay in tune and follow me on social media. See you later. Have a great day.