I had been teaching elementary school general music for about six years when I was told I was going to direct a middle school chorus.
Now mind you, I had never taught a chorus before.
I hadn't participated in a chorus since I was in high school. And in college, I was not required to be in a chorus nor did I opt to be in a vocal group.
Let’s not kid ourselves.
I sang and played Fender bass in a wedding band, played double bass in road bands and an after-hours club in Philly, and subbed on either trumpet or bass in a band at a strip show at the Troc.
My pedigree was spotty to say the least.
All this is to say: I had no real concept of choral singing.
The most I had done concerning choral singing with my elementary school kids was basic two-part stuff, and that was only occasionally.
I started amping up my piano chops – I knew it would be a crucial need given the accompaniments I would have to pull off.
Once I started doing research, I discovered a chorus I admired: the Glen Ellyn Children's Chorus of Chicago. I decided to model our sound after theirs.
That led me to my discovery of Doreen Rao and her epic editorial work with Boosey and Hawkes. Her choral works for beginning choruses were just what I needed.
In elementary general music, I never approached music class as just a venue where I threw out music skills, terms, goals, and performances.
The music work was all ancillary to the bigger picture which was the development of the child as a whole individual.
Life lessons were often the foundations of the musical choices I made when planning lessons.
I found that elementary kids were ravenous for this kind of alchemy, blending storytelling, music, singing, composing, theater, character development, and ethics.
But I knew that middle school chorus would be different.
It would be at least a 90/10 mix of solid choral singing mixed with all the other stuff and I would have to find new ways to integrate the life lessons I felt were important in the development of a middle school child.
I had two mixed choruses: fifth/sixth and seven/eighth. There were no auditions. Anyone who wanted to sing could join.
The kids were a mix of students that I had taught in elementary school as well as new members who entered the school in middle school. There was definitely a buzz that they while thought they had bid a farewell to elementary school music and Mr. Holmes, they had a second opportunity to have me in music.
I picked a variety of Doreen Rao editions and augmented it with some of the songs I had composed for them to sing in elementary school.
There's nothing quite like a trip down memory lane for middle schoolers and they enjoyed the idea of looking back with me on a time when they were young, revisiting their old favorites, and singing them with middle school vocal power and range.
Many of the Rao pieces we were doing were easy, with only minimal part singing.
But some of the pieces I picked were deceptively hard.
When they got disappointed learning that those pieces took more time and effort, I kept impressing upon the chorus that all important goals in music were achieved by setting small goals and building upon them, one small goal at a time.
I was determined to have a real mix of easy successes, moderately challenging pieces, and some that would just be beyond their abilities.
I didn't want the kids to feel that the challenge of growing up in either life or in music was insurmountable but I wanted to make sure that they knew that life – as well as music - was a challenge that would require their sustained effort when things got tough.
That's how I stumbled onto a beautiful two-part arrangement of Mozart's “Ave Verum Corpus”.
If you're not familiar with the piece, here is a beautiful performance by the Choir of King’s College in Cambridge, England.
I played a recording of the arrangement for the kids and they were impressed.
“We're going to be performing this piece in twenty days.”
They looked at me as if I had lost touch with their abilities as well as my sanity.
“But this is hard! And it’s in Latin!” they yelled.
I saw girl turn to the person next to her and silently mouth the words, "This is REAL music!"
“Ahhhh, but we have a plan. So let's get started.”
I handed out the music.
They had all learned from me to silently skim, scan, and study any piece of paper that I gave them and they started quietly going over the score.
In the silence, I started playing the introduction on the piano and then told the ladies to hum the first two measures of their part as I played them.
They sang them back to me.
We worked on the vowels for a minute or two and sang the two bars again.
“Beautiful. Gentleman, it's your turn.”
I played the introduction again and then played their part for just two measures, which they sang back to me.
Without missing a beat, I gave each of them their starting notes and we sang the first two measures a capella.
We did it again with the piano intro and accompaniment for the first two bars.
No more than ten minutes after we started working on “Ave Verum Corpus” I matter-of-factly said, “Okay, put that one away and let's pull out “Do Di Le”.
They looked confused.
”What? We're only doing two measures?”
“Yes.”
“Then how are we going to be ready to sing this in a program in twenty days?”
“Remember I said I had a plan? Yes, we are going to learn Mozart's masterpiece . . . . .two measures at a time, one day at a time!”
The room got even quieter.
“If we stay on track, we will have learned the last two measures the day before we perform this in collection.
How many measures in this piece?"
Heads went down and counting commenced.
Two kids simultaneously yelled , "Forty-seven!" as if they were battling contestants on "Family Feud".
"And how many do I play solo, by myself?"
"Nine!"
"So how many are you responsible for?"
"Thirty-eight!"I turned to a boy in the first row.
“Scott, do you eat a whole pizza in one mouthful?”
“I wish I could!”, which drew laughs from the chorus as well one kid yelling “He did last night!”
“The only way I know how to eat a pizza is one piece at a time, one bite at a time.
If you stick with that plan, you will eventually eat the entire pizza.
That's what we're going to do with this “Ave Verum Corpus Pizza”: one slice, one bite at a time. Two measures a day.”
And that’s what we did.
While we worked on all our other repertoire in the traditional way, every rehearsal we would sing the measures we had previously learned in “Ave Verum Corpus” and then nail the next two measures. It was quick, efficient, and painless.
We stuck with our plan until there were only about eight bars left which meant we had about four days left.
Before we started our two measures for that day, I turned to them and asked, “Hey, do you want to get crazy today and do all eight bars today?”
A thunderous “Yeah!” came from the kids.
We blew out the last eight bars that day and were excited for the pending performance.
Everyday or so as we worked on it, I would revisit the “one slice, one bite” concept and reiterate that anything worthwhile in music is worth learning accurately in small goals.
They did a beautiful job with the performance, better than their teacher did. The middle school chorus had never sung in Latin before and it made an impression on our audience.
When they performed it for my elementary kids several weeks later, deeply embed in their performance was the feeling of, “I was once you and someday you’ll be me, singing harder, more grown-up music.”
I hope the big takeaway from the chorus members was the life lesson that an incremental, day by day approach to reaching a goal works.
The easier it is for your students to visualize a goal and a confident path to achieve it, the greater the probability they will reach it.
Reaching a well set goal in music is often contingent upon setting well set smaller goals that lead to the greater goal.
Musical performances can be seen as a destination of a journey that started with the first steps of the first rehearsal.
But just as in Life, the destination isn't always the most valuable goal.
It's also about the journey, enjoying each step, compounding each success as if it were a percolating investment, savoring each pizza slice by pizza slice, and realizing that sometimes in music as in life, it comes down to nailing many little goals, one at time.
“We're going to be performing this piece in twenty days.”
They looked at me as if I had lost touch with their abilities as well as my sanity.
“But this is hard! And it’s in Latin!” they yelled.
I saw girl turn to the person next to her and silently mouth the words, "This is REAL music!"
“Ahhhh, but we have a plan. So let's get started.”
I handed out the music.
They had all learned from me to silently skim, scan, and study any piece of paper that I gave them and they started quietly going over the score.
In the silence, I started playing the introduction on the piano and then told the ladies to hum the first two measures of their part as I played them.
They sang them back to me.
We worked on the vowels for a minute or two and sang the two bars again.
“Beautiful. Gentleman, it's your turn.”
I played the introduction again and then played their part for just two measures, which they sang back to me.
Without missing a beat, I gave each of them their starting notes and we sang the first two measures a capella.
We did it again with the piano intro and accompaniment for the first two bars.
No more than ten minutes after we started working on “Ave Verum Corpus” I matter-of-factly said, “Okay, put that one away and let's pull out “Do Di Le”.
They looked confused.
”What? We're only doing two measures?”
“Yes.”
“Then how are we going to be ready to sing this in a program in twenty days?”
“Remember I said I had a plan? Yes, we are going to learn Mozart's masterpiece . . . . .two measures at a time, one day at a time!”
The room got even quieter.
“If we stay on track, we will have learned the last two measures the day before we perform this in collection.
How many measures in this piece?"
Heads went down and counting commenced.
Two kids simultaneously yelled , "Forty-seven!" as if they were battling contestants on "Family Feud".
"And how many do I play solo, by myself?"
"Nine!"
"So how many are you responsible for?"
"Thirty-eight!"I turned to a boy in the first row.
“Scott, do you eat a whole pizza in one mouthful?”
“I wish I could!”, which drew laughs from the chorus as well one kid yelling “He did last night!”
“The only way I know how to eat a pizza is one piece at a time, one bite at a time.
If you stick with that plan, you will eventually eat the entire pizza.
That's what we're going to do with this “Ave Verum Corpus Pizza”: one slice, one bite at a time. Two measures a day.”
And that’s what we did.
While we worked on all our other repertoire in the traditional way, every rehearsal we would sing the measures we had previously learned in “Ave Verum Corpus” and then nail the next two measures. It was quick, efficient, and painless.
We stuck with our plan until there were only about eight bars left which meant we had about four days left.
Before we started our two measures for that day, I turned to them and asked, “Hey, do you want to get crazy today and do all eight bars today?”
A thunderous “Yeah!” came from the kids.
We blew out the last eight bars that day and were excited for the pending performance.
Everyday or so as we worked on it, I would revisit the “one slice, one bite” concept and reiterate that anything worthwhile in music is worth learning accurately in small goals.
They did a beautiful job with the performance, better than their teacher did. The middle school chorus had never sung in Latin before and it made an impression on our audience.
When they performed it for my elementary kids several weeks later, deeply embed in their performance was the feeling of, “I was once you and someday you’ll be me, singing harder, more grown-up music.”
I hope the big takeaway from the chorus members was the life lesson that an incremental, day by day approach to reaching a goal works.
The easier it is for your students to visualize a goal and a confident path to achieve it, the greater the probability they will reach it.
Reaching a well set goal in music is often contingent upon setting well set smaller goals that lead to the greater goal.
Musical performances can be seen as a destination of a journey that started with the first steps of the first rehearsal.
But just as in Life, the destination isn't always the most valuable goal.
It's also about the journey, enjoying each step, compounding each success as if it were a percolating investment, savoring each pizza slice by pizza slice, and realizing that sometimes in music as in life, it comes down to nailing many little goals, one at time.
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