The Rehearsal 3 – The First Battle Continued

In my last post, I discussed philosophical choices for programming.  Today, I want to continue on this same topic, but from a different perspective.

There are a number of elements that I believe go into good programming.  This discussion is applicable through a whole range of ensembles from public school ensembles, youth orchestras, collegiate level groups, and that nebulous, and ever changing – semi-pro/community/small town orchestra and even to professional groups.

And I also believe that some Music Directors of professional orchestras could stand to read this, but that whole area has many other considerations involved.  This post is mostly about those groups that are educational in nature.

There is only so much money, so much rehearsal time and so many players available to any group.  You would be wise to consider these Finite Resources.

And for Finite Resources, you have to answer these questions – Who is available to play for you? How much time do you have to rehearse? How much money to you have to spend on music/extra players/extra rehearsals?

I might sum this up as Practical Programming – ability, availability, and money.

What music can the ensemble in front of you play well that is available and affordable.

It is important to have these questions enter into your programming equation even though you are engaged in a wonderful and creative artistic activity.  Rental pieces are expensive.  Large works require extra players. Hard pieces require more rehearsal time.

Everything has a cost - either in time, in personal favors, or in actual dollars.

So what elements should one consider when Programming Practically?

Here is a list of a few things that I always try to consider when creating a concert program:

1. The Music Has to be Good - Otherwise, who cares?  The audience doesn’t, the players don’t, don’t waste yours and everyone else’s time with bad music just because it is playable.
2. Independence of Voices – If everyone has unison rhythms, and unison melodic content, a lot your rehearsal work will take care of itself.  For these kinds of works, you can have less mature, less proactive musicians playing the parts and you will still be able to pull off a reasonable performance.  Greater and greater independence of individual parts generally follows this order:
   1. Differentiation by Area – Strings  vs. woodwinds vs. brass
   2. Sectional Differentiation –  Violin I vs Violin II, Flutes vs oboes
   3. Within Section Differentiation – Divisi string parts, Flute I vs. Flute II, Clarinet I vs. Clarinet II
   4. Solos - Extended solo sections requiring individual musicians to show substantial, individual musicianship.
   • As the piece features more of the elements further down the list, your ensemble needs to be a more mature, independent, and pro-active collection of musicians if they are to have a successful performance of the work.
3. Key Signature matters – Understand that if you are performing a piece with a student level orchestra, the key of the work will be a factor.  Pieces that are predominantly flats, will have more tuning problems in the strings than a key that is a “nice” key for strings – C, G, D, etc.  Should this change what you program?  Maybe, maybe not.  It really depends on the ability level of the group.  So you should know that Ab or Db major are going to be battles for young string players and large portions of your rehearsal time will be spent just getting the players to begin playing comfortably in that key.
4. Will the musicians basically understand the work after the first few read-throughs? – There are lots great pieces of music that your ensemble will understand after going through it a few times.  And there are lots of important and amazing pieces of music that require more attention, more time, and more focus.  These pieces are less instantly rewarding.  There are some great pieces that your group just might not ever get no matter how much time you spend discussing, rehearsing, and teaching it to them. I consider the “can they get it?” question to be a major factor when assessing the amount of rehearsal time I have available.  If your musicians can get the idea of the piece quickly, the rehearsal time will be spent working difficult spots, cleaning up tuning and rhythms, etc.  If they don’t get it, you will have to constantly re-teach the rhythms, intervals, tuning, dynamics, and everything else, every time you start the piece.  If they can hear why they need to do what the music says, then they will initiate the musical ideas themselves.

What elements do you take into consideration when programming? Do you agree or disagree with anything/everything/something I’ve stated here? I would love to hear your thoughts. Post a comment!