[MUSIC]. Here are a few videos where my colleagues Dan and Tonu discuss repertoire and, specifically, building a program. I know one of the most important decisions I make is picking repertoire. I probably spend as much time out of rehearsal, picking the repertoire, as I spend over the course of a month rehearsing that actual literature. What kind of approaches do you take to picking an effective program? Well I'm. [LAUGH]. I am there. I think it's the hardest thing we do. Everything else flows from the choice of the material that you put out there. And once that's in place, then a lot of the other operational decisions just have to follow. So it, it's difficult job. I guess I have a sort of a formula, and, bear in mind, this comes from my experience teaching amateur choirs. So I want them to cover a lot of ground, and, I'm not necessarily, interested in them knowing, every, aspect of a composer's work, in, any given, program. So I want to cover lots of composers and lots of different periods, and so on. But I, my little formula is, what I call, my wedding program. Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. So I'm going to look for some historic pieces that I can use to illustrate where we've come from. I'm going to look for different characteristic uses of the ensemble. I'm going to look for things which are more contemporary both in the popular sense of the term, and in the artistic sense of the term and I'm going to try and get as much variance as I can get as I cross all those lines. At the same time I look for either pedagogical or thematic similarities within those lines. That said the hardest thing in the world I think is to have a theme with one piece missing. Or to have a pedagogy that's that a, a pedagogical theme where you've just gone one bridge too far. You're just too far some way. Because the whole program has to have a flow. In other words typically speaking, when I start up with a program I would I would look for a sort of an accelerating pace or a, I don't know. A gradual building of crowd appeal. >> Mm-hm. So, for instance, if I'm going to do something old and historic it's probably going to be right out of the, right off the bat. And I'm probably going to follow that with something that's, may also be old, but has a great contrast in tempo. And I try and avoid strange I try and avoid descending key relationships. So I actually program. If I do something in D, then I'm looking for something in E-flat, I'm not looking for something in D-flat to follow that D. >> And a chromatic movement is okay. >> Yes, I want. >> You don't want fourths or fifths? >> Yeah, I want it to brighten as it goes. I want it to, I want it to get brighter. when, when you think about what's usable for a choir, there are certain keys that'll work for certain kinds of ensembles more effectively because they encapsulate the range within which your singers can sing. So that's probably not the best example, d and e flat is probably not the best example. But D and E or E and F might be a good example because it's going to wrap the lowest note that your bass is [UNKNOWN] and it's going to give your sopranos lot's of money, lot's of room for money notes on the top. The fifth is going to be high b or high a or something like that. That's what I mean. Thirdly, I look for something that people can have a certain amount of relief in. In other words, I think people who come to concerts, especially if they're amateur singers, then they're probably amateur singer parents, or amateur singer audience members. So I think it's important that you try and educate the audience at the same time you're trying to educate the people who are participating in the event. So I look for something where there's a degree of cultural familiarity. And that degree goes up as it approaches the end. And then I try and draw linkages over the course of the time that I'm teaching between the precedence which arrive at the end in something which we recognize as culturally familiar because I think it's incumbent on us as humans and teachers. To show people that we all stand on the shoulders of someone who precedes us. And for one of a better way of describing this I think, one of the interesting dilemmas of our, of our culture and our time is we tend to see classic as the Beatles, and never realize that classic could go back. Thousand of years. And that's just our particular conception of where culture comes from. Classic in other cultures is dramatically different. And it's important for us to explore as many of those things as we can possibly do. The big, the interesting question in doing programming is, I think. Or an interesting question in doing programming is. Is how far out should you go from the general realm of cultural familiarity before you. Sacrifice the attempt against the lack of understanding. So I'd be the first one to tell you that there are a lot things I don't know. Lot of cultural traditions I know absolutely nothing about. I sing in a diatonic octave. I don't do well with, with, quarter steps and so on, and I don't do well with throat tones. You know, there are just things I don't do well. On the other hand I think honoring a culture, honor, a, a, attempting something honors a culture even if the attempt is not as wonderful as you might want to make it. So regardless of whether I want to perform early polyphony or not I can't have boy sopranos in my men's choir. They just don't exist. And if I did polyphony with a sub, you know, with an SATB choir then I have even further away from the historic sense of perfect that's associated with that program. But, it's important for people to understand that polyphony has its roots in particular traditions and it's practiced in a certain way, and it has a certain effect, the structural impact is. It can play itself out. And then we see these things, play, you know, come forward in time. So we can traverse from the Renaissance concept of polyphony through the Baroque concept of polyphony in to the high romantic sense of polyphony, and so on. And we can see modern a capella music, for instance, to, to take a card out of the kids, that's a form of rhythmic, polyphony. It plays out rhythmically. Not necessarily melodically, yeah. >> It's a lot of variables to deal with, but they're worth stressing over if we're going to have an effective program. [BLANK_AUDIO]. Dan, I wanted to follow up on a couple of issues from the previous repertoire discussion that you had. And the first is this idea the idea of sets. >> Mm-hm. >> And often core programs, we won't just see one big piece followed by another big piece. But we'll see two, three, or four smaller pieces grouped together. >> Mm-hm. >> And the applause is supposed to wait until the end. Can you talk a little bit about how you construct those. >> Yeah. >> And is it simply because the pieces are so short, you don't want a lot of applaud. >> Yeah. It could be for any number of reasons, but I'd say the last one is probably one of the most salient ones. It just takes too much time. I think if, in my view, if I want to group pieces together for some reason that I. For instance, it might be possible that you would do say, three. Related settings of a particular Latin text done by different composers from either the similar, a similar time frame or quite radically different time frames. Then you might want to group those together as a set. And I think if you want to do that, then hey. It's a terrific pedagogical idea, but I think you owe your audience a little bit of help. So you label them one, so that they see those three pieces with something titled one, and then a section titled two, so that they realize that's what you want them to do. You want them to hear them as continuous pieces. >> So in other words, it's almost like movements of a symphony. >> Movements of a symphony. >> Or a suite. >> Yes. that, that would be a terrific help. In some cases that stuff is built in. Like if you do sets of pieces written by a particular composer then they have a single title, but multiple movements listed under it and in exactly the same way as symphony would be done. And that's fairly self evident, but it's a little bit obscure from a programming standpoint that, to try and have somebody read my mind in terms of what I thought was significant about. Well for instance, I did a program a few years back that I started out, it, it started out on a lark. It, it started out by accident. We were approached as a collective group about the year 1958 being a watershed year. And I had planed to do a Poulenc piece, and I had a composer in my group who had written us a piece, imitating that style. And he was born in 58, and Poulenc died in 58, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. And I went forward like crazy trying to find all this 1958 stuff. Well, the connections were one of them was Leonard Bernstein and. Meredith Wilson, but The Music Man came out late in 57 I believe, and and West Side Story came out in 58 or vice versa. And they're the arch opposites of each other stylistically, yet they're both theatrical vehicles and you couldn't have a different conception of the male chorus. And two possible, it's just not possible to plan that. And so that turned out to be brilliant. But on the other hand the only real way I could link that would be to say something like, theatrical, you know, night events of 1958. Or whatever. Because the, the, unless you've actually studied it, you wouldn't have known all of those connections. They were not the kind of thing that jumps right out at you. And. Lighter rose and Officer Crupke are as far apart as you can possibly imagine. But they do accomplish the thing that I said earlier, which is they have huge amounts of contrast and they appeal, generally, to a group of people who would see it in a very amature basis. So, I just stood up and said. Here's the connection. >> This is the link. It's probably obscure, but the next link was even more obscure because, Stephen Sondheim was, was a collaborator in West Side Story, and we did one of his choruses scored for male voices as a follow-up to those three pieces. So we had three pieces from the theater, theater, one of which was as different, Meredith Wilson, which. Sounds like, it was 40 years or 50 years, earlier. Officer Krupke, which is, as, different from that as it could possibly be. And then, Stephen Sondheim, a piece from the, Sondheim musical, that, again, with a radical leap. And, I think if you're going to do that, then, you owe it a little bit to your audience to brief them, in some way. >> Yeah. >> So that they see the connection, and recognize the stunt that you want them to do. If you're going to expect them to hear something, as a. Through, as a thread. >> I've experienced that same revelation of, holy, these are same time and they sound completely different. >> Completely different, yes. >> So the second issue I wanted to ask you about is, in terms of involving the ensemble in repertoire decisions. Especially because you had mentioned, I think a lot of us do conduct amateur ensembles, where the. Players and the singers are there simply because they want to be there. >> Mm-hm. >> They enjoy it, they want to. >> Mm-hm. >> Have fun for lack of a better word. >> Mm-hm. >> So how do you balance their needs with kind of, our needs or our thoughts about, well this music is good for you. You may not like it, or that music that you like. It's really not very good music. >> [LAUGH] >> how, how do you deal with that? >> Well to be honest, like you I suspect. I struggle. >> Yeah. >> But I've learned over the years that some of the best ideas have emerged from what the, the singers want to do. For a lot of complex reasons. And, I'll tell you a story. And if this just gets too long, then you shut me off, and I'm fine with that. >> [MUSIC] >> Years ago, I was teaching school. And it was when Amadeus was, hit the theatres. >> Mm-hm. >> And a, a, a kid made passing mention of the fact that he was going to go down to the nearby city, and, and watch Amadeus. And I said, oh great. I want to see how it is. So he came back the next day. He was waiting for me when I got there. He'd been camped on my doorstep, waiting for me to arrive. And he said. I want to do the music from this and I said well, what do you mean? And he said, well there's this piece where they, this guy goes down into hell and everybody's shreeking and they're singing and I said well that's, that's an opera. Of course, Don Giovanni you, you can't do that. And he said oh, okay, whatever. He said, can I make an announcement in choir and I said sure. So he stood up and he said, I'm going to go see Amadeus. He said it's the best movie you've even seen. He said, I'm leaving the parking lot 3 o'clock. We'll be home by 6 o'clock, anybody want to go? The next day there were four people camped on my doorstep, and they said we know we can't sing that place where they're, where he's being dragged down into hell, but could we sing the place where he, where they're shoveling that stuff on him when he's buried. And I said, well that's from the requiem mass. You can't sing that. That's just way too complicated for us. We're a high school choir. And they said, okay, okay. Can we make an announcement? I said, sure. They said, we're going to see Amadeus and we're taking, I'm driving in the East End. And the next day there was 15 kids camped on my door step and they said, we want to sing this music. And I said, you can't do that. And I said, I don't have the money, I dah dah dah. All kinds of reasons. They said, we'll buy the books. I said, but, we're three weeks away from the concert. The program is already set. If I do this, it's 42 minutes of music. Said, we'll practice, we'll have sectionals. We'll do it all. You don't have to do anything. All you have to do is just conduct us. So I said, okay, fine. Well, I'd already looked, and I found out that you could buy it in a cheap edition, and so on. So I bought the stupid music. >> [LAUGH] >> It was a wonderful experience. They learned that music. They learned faster than they learned the rest of the program, inside of. I think inside of a week they've learned every movement except for the, the the last movement. And that's the same music in, in the commonly done version of the Mozart Requiem. It's the same movement as the Kyrie at the front, so it uses the same material. It was an astounding experience. It turned the entire concert upside down on its ear, and the kids, I heard it in the halls as I walked through the school. Kids would walk around singing, and stand around the water fountain singing. It was a stupefying experience in all terms, and I learned the hard way that there are times when they know what they want to sing and why they want to sing it, and that will trump >> Mm. >> Whatever concept I had, or whatever it is I think I should be doing. And, you know, in truth, the concert, I told you about the 1958 concert, that was only possible because a, we had sung the Pulank so I knew when he died, and b, this guy who was a composer in my choir, I happen to know he was born in 58 and he was so taken with the style, he tried to imitate it. He tried to create a piece in that style. And I thought that's cool. And that it never would have happened if I had not paid attention. But I'd say, well yes. The answer is yes. I do. >> The answer is yes. >> And on the, and on the other hands I struggle. >> Yeah. >> Because they also want to do some bizarre things that we can't do and some things that are impolite and that we won't do, and so on. >> That's a great story. In future videos, I'll tell you this time when my entire band camped out trying to play Back to the Future. >> [LAUGH] And it was wonderful >> [UNKNOWN] I often find that for every hour I spend in rehearsal, I spend at least an hour or two outside of rehearsal picking the repertoire that we're doing in the first place. I wonder if you can talk a little bit about your approach to building a program in terms of literature. >> Well, it's a very complicated question. It's a question that most audience members have no idea how much thought and effort we put into it to create what they hear at a concert. And, it's a question that is variable, very greatly depending on your ensemble. You have different constituencies to satisfy. And I have to satisfy many constituencies when I'm conducting a University ensemble. And I have different constituencies with a professional ensemble. With a University ensemble,. Your main constituent is the ensemble. It's the students. They are enrolled for credit. They are there to learn. So you have to think about the educational mission of the repertoire you select. How do you expose them to some of the great standard master works like Beethoven's 5th symphony? How do you expose them to music of different periods? How much can you give them of new music? And how much can we have with soloist. At a University we like to have faculty soloist. At least once a year we like to have student soloist of course for a concerto competition. We like to collaborate with the choir every few years. So we have various repertoire things that are given to us on a regular basis. But the, the bottom line is giving the students the variety that they need to go out there and be a well-grounded musician with a greater perspective, 18th century music, 21st century music. German music, Russian music, French music, Italian music, you name it. My programs here tend to be a very broad mix of standard and non-standard pieces, pieces that complement each other, and yet, they contrast with each other. There are certain templates out there that people use for putting together programs. They're very standard overture-concerto-symphony templates that lots of professional orchestras. Have used for decades. Some of them are finding that's become a little bit, old hat, and are trying, new models. I've often, used with a, and I have the benefit of, of, having a fairly large ensemble here, and we can do some extended works. I've used a template of two major works on a concert of, maybe 35 minutes each. On, one on one half, one on the other half, with just an intermission in between. Kind of like two pillars of sound which is a, a nice thing. On the other hand, you may want to do a program with four or six shorter pieces, and then it becomes a little bit more tricky as to how to contrast and compare them. Certain things I don't want to do is do, I'm, I'm not a fan of a programmable one composer, I don't like to do an all Beethoven concert or a long Mozart concert or something. Specially if you're only doing three or four programs a year, you need to have. More variety. I think you want to have variety in texture. You certainly want to have a variety in key relationships. You don't want to have a whole program of three pieces in D major. The audience wouldn't maybe necessarily notice it so much, but there could be an aural fatigue that sets in with something like that. Maybe as professionals, we think about those things a little bit more. Than others, but I think of putting together a great program as really analogous to a great chef putting together a great meal. There are certain appetizers that need to be followed with the right entrée, or it will taste terrible. If the desert doesn't fit, it's just not going to be right. You need a palate cleanser at some point, that's fine. And, to me, that, that's an analogy that I like to always think of, that, if you put together this and that, and then you have this wine with this fish, or whatever, there's your sense or programming. Complementary and contrasting at the same time. I would never put a piece of, Haydn and Mozart on the same concert. They're too close. They're very different, but they're too close in a certain way. So, there's the constituency of. The ensemble. I have an audience constituency, of course, that I have to think about. We have to think about it less in our setting because we are an academic institution. We don't rely exclusively on ticket sales for our budget. Professional orchestras, they rely on ticket sales. They have to sell tickets in order to balance their budget. They have to play Beethoven's symphonies and Tchaikovsky's symphonies every single year. They absolutely have to or the box office would suffer. So you have that constituency that varies from ensemble to ensemble. You also have the constituency of your colleagues in, at the university, where indeed, I do have faculty members that come to me on a regular basis and say. Hey, I'd love to do this concerto with you, or, hey, can we do a concerto two or three years down the road. What might be looked at as repertoire. With a professional orchestra, you have a board of directors, a board of trustees, as a constituency. They hire you. They're your boss. You have to keep them happy. They have to be able to say, well, we want an overall theme for this season's program. Or we want to do this or that, or we think we're hearing a little bit too much modern music this season. Can you tone it down next year? That's a different constituency, and then there's yourself as a constituent. You want to do music that you are dying to do. Music that you love, music that you've maybe done before, but want to rethink, and restudy or music that you've never done before. And is on your short list of the pieces I want to do before I die, whatever it may be. So all those constituencies have to be balanced. Then you, within the orchestra itself, I have constituencies that I need to keep busy. If I have a wonderful low brass section, let's say, and I program a piece that uses them for only five minutes on one concert, half the semester they're sitting out most of the time. It's a waste of their talent. It's boring for them. They think, why did I sign up for orchestra? I'm just playing a five minute overture. If we have particularly strong players in certain instruments that are around for a few years, I want to be able to cater to those strengths and use them efficiently, as we have currently in our trumpet section. I've specifically programmed pieces last year and this year that take advantage of individual talent in those areas. So you can't always predict the talent as obviously there is a lot of turnover in an academic institution. About 1 3rd of my players are new every fall in the orchestra. Sometimes we have a surprise of a wonderful entering player we didn't even know was coming to school here. And they didn't audition, they just. Show up and play incredibly well, and it's wonderful for us. But other times we know that there are certain people here that are just going to be here four years and let's take advantage of them. Let's find repertoire that will highlight their talents. Sometimes we find people going to study abroad for a semester, and we know we're losing them. And then we think, okay, I'm losing my top clarinet. What am I going to do, how am I going to juggle things so that it works out? Again, it's a different layer of thought, in program building. But that's also a constituency. The players that are there, that should be utilized to their greatest extents, and not neglected. >> You mentioned the, the nourishing. Not nourishing. The idea of food. And different constituencies. And often think about in terms of, each of those constituencies has to be nourished. We want, want to be nourished ourselves. >> Yes. You know, that challenges us and builds our skills and experiences. The ensemble, the same way and the audience, the same way. They may want a different kind of nutrient to be nourished with but we have to think about it in that way. You mentioned not liking the idea of all one composer on a program. Which kind of comes to the idea of theme concerts. >> Mm-hm. >> So, there are other ways to create, that's kind of the most broad stroke way of creating connections in a concert is everyone by the same composer. >> Mm-hm. >> There are more subtle ways to create connections that maybe are a little more elegant. >> Sure, I think you can create connections, let's say, by just nationality. You could do an all Russian program, which we've done here. And you can find Russian music from the middle of the 19th century into the 20th century, and you can contrast Tchaikovsky with Shostakovich. And, national concerts, I think, are a fine thing. Or in all, all English music or contrasting English and American and, and alternating them. Or you could have a program of music inspired by theater or by drama. Excerpt, let's say, a suite from an opera, a suite from a ballet, a piece of program music inspired by a poem or a novel, kind of a, program that, that takes its inspiration from non-musical, literary or visual sources. There are many ways of doing that. I think themes like that are great, and, and you can put together some really interesting programs. And that's the kind of program that marketing directors love in professional orchestras. They can put something in the brochure and create a fancy title for it and try to get the audience to come. And you're still dealing with a very. You know, a likeable and comprehensible artistic product when you do that. So themes are certainly a good way to go if you do it tastefully and within a variety. >> I've found sometimes that the theme if, when we're trying to nourish all these different constituencies, sometimes it's hard to also create a theme. But I've also found that sometimes a theme kind of reveals itself after all those other pieces have put into place. And we can create connections that we didn't even know existed in the first place. >> Mm-hm. >> Lots of great ideas for programming.
