Starting a Clarinet Choir, Part 2: Rehearsal Strategies
by Margaret Thornhill
“Starting a Clarinet Choir”, the inaugural article in this new Clarinet Choir column (September 2007 issue), dealt with repertoire, instrumentation and recruitment for clarinetist/conductors interested in starting a clarinet choir. In this article, I’ll consider some of the key issues that can be explored in rehearsal once you have established your membership and found your musical vision.
Creating a Group Sound: Strategies for Blend
The defining characteristic of the clarinet choir is its blend. Unlike the kaleidoscopic range of colors of a mixed wind ensemble, a clarinet choir’s ideal sound is a tonal match. The subtle differences in character of the various sections of the clarinet choir correspond to differences within the family of stringed instruments or between the different parts of a mixed vocal ensemble. Much of the contrast comes from texture rather than timbre, but that shows to best advantage when the voices within the sections are homogeneously blended.
The result of this approach is exemplified by some of the best European clarinet choirs on recording, such as the beautifully undulating sound of the Walter Boeykens clarinet ensemble in their performance of Robert Groslot’s original work, I Giardini della Villa d’Este—a work for 25 solo clarinetists (and soprano voice) scored for sections of 5 each: E-flat, B-flat soprano, A soprano, Alto and Bass. The shimmering colors of the sections perfectly mirror the subject of the work, the fountains of the Villa at Tivoli. As of time of writing, an mp3 of this remarkable composition could be found on Groslot’s website, in his list of compositions at: http://www.robertgroslot.eu/en/index.html
To accomplish a performance like this, in which separate lines of counterpoint merge in color to form a harmonious whole—experienced players have to sacrifice some of their tonal individuality. Same instrument ensembles like clarinet choirs magnify differences between individual players. The suggestion that players be flexible enough in tone to be able to mimic other members of the ensemble may seem a radical departure from their private training. Some players will need to be persuaded that this is for the good of the music; most will need explicit suggestion on how it can be done.
I prefer to start this process by using arrangements of familiar melodic material where the players can actually hear each other and then creating tone matching exercises from within the parts. One good choice might be Matthew Johnson’s arrangement of Percy Grainger’s Irish Tune. Have the principal clarinetist—or any other clarinet player with a beautiful sound you’d like them to copy—play the melody, and ask those doubling him, one by one, to play with him in unison, sounding like one clarinetist. This should be done with leaders of all sections.
You can also try the following tone matching exercise : starting with the principal clarinetist—or any clarinetist whose tone you’d like others to copy—a single note is passed one-by-one from player to player. The person starting should hold the note for several beats. The next person should imperceptibly let her note sneak in while the other player is still holding. Only when the second player's note is established should the first player drop out. The exercise continues around in a circle, coming back to the principal player. This is especially effective with the soprano clarinets.
This exercise can also be used to match intonation. It’s an ideal preparation for the introductory measures of Nelhybel’s Danza (from Chorale and Danza) where there are staggered entries of clarinets on a single pitch. The desired effect is a seamless crescendo of volume and texture, ideally sounding as one.
Intonation and Doubling
Good intonation is especially challenging on doubled parts.
Simple band-type exercises of scales in unison and at the octave can make a difference, but even in this situation, players may feel too great a comfort level with their own intonation tendencies. A step beyond this is to use the tuner at home or in the practice room—not in rehearsal—to map your own scale to see which notes are characteristically more than 5 to 10 cents in either direction from A 440.This can give individuals some idea of where they most need to adjust. Since matching another player is harder than matching the visual feedback of an electronic tuner, there is no substitute for the experience of playing together with that person. Playing duets and quartets for pleasure outside rehearsal time can be a transforming experience for group intonation.
Often it helps to be explicit about telling players whom to match for intonation within the section. If there’s a principal player on that part who has very stable and reliable intonation, holding them up as a role model is a more direct route to this goal than suggesting that two players simply adjust to each other –this may be way too vague to yield results. The person chosen as the role model then has primary responsibility for matching tuning with other notes in the harmony.
At a very recent concert of my clarinet choir, we encountered a situation like this in the first measures of the Holst (Johnson arrangement) of First Suite in E-flat. The initial presentation of the Chaconne melody is doubled at the octave by the bass clarinet section and the contrabass, soli. This is not a match made in heaven: melodic doubling of the contra with any other clarinet reveals too much about inherent weaknesses in its scale. Who should adjust to whom? We decided that it was much more successful when the contra attempted to match the principal bass, (reassured by trial and error in rehearsal that he was able to do so). The other basses then matched the principal: whether they felt she was right or wrong, it created a replicable solution. Similar solutions can improve frequent doublings between basset or alto and third clarinet found throughout the clarinet choir literature. However, it’s essential for these instruments to be positioned close enough together so that they can actually hear each other.
Anticipating Common Problems
A single-instrument ensemble coached by a teacher of that instrument can become a laboratory for technical growth. If you are an experienced teacher of clarinet, you will find that technical issues familiar to private lessons also come up in ensemble: musical problems that are created by technical habits. You may find it useful to keep a list of these in your head and refer to them as performance traps your players can watch out for:
Pitch vs. dynamics: sharp when soft, flat when loud.
Poor intonation on initial attacks (caused by embouchure movement).
Unclear differences between all the varieties of articulation, from dry staccato to legato tonguing (sometimes people are not sure about what they are actually supposed to be doing, or need to be told what you are hearing).
Failure to play and listen through final notes of phrases.
Distinguishing between accents, sforzandi, and fp (an accent within a piano dynamic) and the role of breath and tongue in making these effects).
Consider the role that breathing has in these common performance traps:
Lining up initial attacks.
Late recovery after catch breaths.
Keeping long stretches of off-beats in tempo (too many breaths in between making it harder to keep up).
Just as you help your private students find musically appropriate spots to breathe in their solo repertoire, you should anticipate your players’ need for clues where phrases begin and end, since these may not be obvious without the score. A third or fourth soprano clarinet part consisting of a string of quarter notes may not tell much about how to breathe with the melody that it is accompanying.
You’ll need to judge from the music itself where to have group breaths where there’s a need to clarify the structure of the work, such as at cadences, or where overlapped, “staggered” breathing is needed to create an effect of no separation. The more complicated the rhythmic character of the music, the more likely breaths are to be offset in different parts. An example of this is in the Bartok Roumanian Dances, (“Buciumeana,” movement IV in Maarten Jense’s arrangement for the Piet Jeegers Clarinet Choir). Starting with the first measure of the movement, the composer sets up a pattern of tied and repeated notes in the accompaniment that is asymmetrical to the solo clarinet melody. The best breath choices will be ones that point up this asymmetry. Watch carefully for situations like this in any polyrhythmic or polyphonic music.
Wherever you decide to mark breaths, be sure to spend some time making sure that the attack after the breath is in time and together.
Voicing
Among the most important tools the conductor can offer is awareness of voicing. Who is the leading voice at any given moment in the music? What is my part, and how can it better support that leading voice tonally, rhythmically?
It’s rare for a composer to mark lead voices and background voices as such (Arnold Schoenberg and some of his followers were famous for this technique). Some composers try to indicate relative balance through dynamic markings, while others do not. More often, there is simply a single group dynamic marking for any section—it’s up to the coach to identify which voices need to be most prominent within that group dynamic. This is confusing, since the conductor/coach must then second-guess what balance the composer wanted based on what the texture is doing. It rarely makes musical sense for all voices to be equally loud or soft all the time. By making these choices about what is foreground and background, the conductor takes responsibility for dynamic balance in the group. Your players depend on this. Especially if they are experienced chamber music players, your comments about the score may be more important to them than any time-beating aspect of your conducting.
The best solutions in voicing depend on your player’s flexibility in blending and accompanying. Here’s an example, again from the Holst First Suite (arranged Johnson). The familiar chaconne melody is present throughout the first movement, but is quickly buried under countermelodies with the same dynamic marking. Those countermelodies—16th note runs marked ff that look very important!—should not overbalance the melody, which is in widely spaced eighth notes below it. A difference in tone color rather than dynamic between the two parts can make their roles clear.
In another similar passage from the same work, four voices are all marked piano, but they are not equally important. The chaconne melody is taken by two voices, but a countermelody at a higher tessitura truly needs to be transparent in tone, without necessarily changing the dynamic level.
Insistence on a varied color palette from your players depending on the relative importance of their parts will make the music more intelligible, and the blend of the ensemble much easier to achieve. All manner of descriptive words are helpful in conveying an image of variety of tone: background, foreground; shadow, focus; white tone, dense tone; bright, dull; pale, edgy.
Structuring the Rehearsal
Wind players get tired in rehearsal. Novice conductors (and some experienced ones, too, as we all know) may find it useful to conceptualize a rehearsal as three phases: warmup, focused attention, and that last counterproductive half-hour when fatigue starts to set in. It helps to acknowledge this natural work pattern by letting the group simply play together for a few minutes, then gradually becoming more focused on the quality of what they are producing. (The beginning of the rehearsal is also a great spot for a well-chosen warm-up piece, such as a chorale.) Tuning should take place after the instruments are fully warm. Don’t forget to save time at the end to simply read for fun or to have a needed private sectional at a time when others don’t have to wait.
In a typical three-hour rehearsal, that central 90 minutes is optimal for the highest level of detail work. Take care to have a realistic plan of what needs to be covered in that time, which could range from a list of potential trouble spots, places where people need to drill notes or rhythm, or closer to the concert, run-throughs or “tops and tail” checks.
Whether you're a clarinet teacher/conductor, an artistic advisor who helps run rehearsals for a non-conducted choir, or a performing member of a developing clarinet ensemble, you have a common interest in keeping rehearsals fun and productive. An economic use of rehearsal time in which no one has to sit and wait for long stretches, well-chosen detail work on specific musical and technical issues in all parts, and well-articulated insights into the character of the music will help keep your players committed to the group and more bonded to each other. Some of these solutions will originate with your background in clarinet technique. Still more solutions may be volunteered by the players themselves. You hope is for each player to leave rehearsal feeling musically challenged and validated.
Copyright 2008, Margaret Thornhill. All Rights Reserved. A copy of this article appeared in the March 2008 issue of The Clarinet.
