Repertoire Project Rationale

Idumea
This song is meant for an all men's ensemble. I have hopes to have the oportunity to work with one of them at some point. The piece would be great educationally because it has quite a bit of doubling for the singer who may need more reinforcemnet than the other. It also opens the opportunity to talk about Shape note singing. The arranger is also alive and well, so being able to directly communicate to him about why he did what he did would be a great learning experince for the boys. There is also the opportunity to work with the band program because the music calls for two flugelhorns.

Dubula
This music would allow for an all girl choir to sing something not in the traditional style. The piece is a traditional Xhosa folk song. This would allow for the conductor to have a platform to talk about different cultures and ways cultures perform their music. The vocal color needed for this text would give the irls an opportunity to explore other sounds in their voice.

Lollipop
This was a pop song from the 1950's. It is well known by audiences and would be a fun bit for the girls to perform because it is light hearted and carefree. Altos have an oppotunity to read from the tenor clef (exposure to other clefs besides treble).  The music also calls for accents on NOT the down beat. The singers also have the option of soloing. It is also a cappella so the students won't be relying on the piano for their tuning or musicality.

Shenandoah
Written for 3 part treble this song will be perfect for a group of women. The music doesn't have any one part singing too low thus making it easily accessible. The arrangment has all the women sing the melody and ends with a major second interval that gets traded off between two parts giving intrigue to a folk song while also dveloping the young singer for more difficult music that doesn't always have the most consonant harmonies.

City Called Heaven
A pathway to exposure of the gospel music from the African-American tradition. This could lead to a discussion of what that means and the significance of its heritage. A conductor-teacher may have a very excellent soloist who would love to take on the challenge of the solo written in this piece. It also would give them opportunity for improvisation which is fairly rare in a choral setting.

Lullaby
This is a beautiful song that the student swould love to sing. The text is simple with lovely imagery and the music sets t up perfectly. The sopranoes and altos sing together in unison and so do the basses and tenors. Everyone is given the opportunity to sing the melody and sing supporting harmonic parts. The music gives the students lots of opportunity to have musical interpretation. There is an a cappella section for the singers to really test their ears. This song is perfect for the excelling SATB ensemble.

Zion's Walls
One of if not the most famous Copland choral piece. This is just standard repertoire for the choral singer. The music is well written while also having the singers in unison and also with each individual line. As the piece goes on it splits and then joins back together from parts to unison. It usually keeps the sopranos and altos together and likewise for the tenors and basses. This would reassure the singers if they felt insecure with their part.

Come Be My Love
Music for the ensemble with a ton of women and not enough men. The text is simple as are the harmonies. Each part will be able to sing the melody at some point. The piano reinforces the parts almost the entire time. Perfeect for a beginning mixed ensemble with tenors and basses that aren't as experienced as your sopranoes and altos.

Repertoire Project Pieces

Links for my Pieces

Lollipop for SSAA
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-vh62v4VekqY1UxelFRMTA2bFpqNlVEa1ZHZElMYVcyUDFR/edit?usp=docslist_api

Dubula for SSAA
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-vh62v4VekqaHFwcFIweEhBUGR2RnRjbzlXbDhHamc2NjFF/edit?usp=docslist_api

Shenandoah for 3 part Treble
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-vh62v4VekqTkg4RVYwYzM5c2ttVk00R1FNdklPemllMHRv/edit?usp=docslist_api

Remember from Two Rosetti Songs for SATB
file:///C:/Users/Owner/Downloads/Doc%20-%20Mar%2031,%202015,%2011-01%20PM.pdf

Lullaby from Three Nocturnes for SATB
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-vh62v4VekqWmxPN1hfVlZrd0RQUFlCSXpCckRjcHNWTmc0/edit?usp=docslist_api

City Called Heaven for SATB
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-vh62v4VekqZ3FUSUVwMGF6ZTBiUERMbUhYMllDbmdyWlV3/edit?usp=docslist_api

Zions Walls for SATB
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-vh62v4VekqNk9wM0FpRDNYRDdKTFFuaE5UWWg1M3o1dmlN/edit?usp=docslist_api

Come Live With Me and Be My Love for SSAB
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-vh62v4VekqNk9wM0FpRDNYRDdKTFFuaE5UWWg1M3o1dmlN/edit?usp=docslist_api

Observation Charlotte: 5/1/15

After a few discussions with Bethany, I have learned that the class that I am observing has not always been the easiest for her. She has felt as though there has been some animostiy directed to her from the kids. The ensemble I observe is mostly  freshman or entry level choir members. The students in it are either obligated to take an arts credit and thought that this would be an easy class to take or don't really have an interest but needed a schedule filler. The problem with that is you get students who don't want to be there. It is very hard to motivate those who don't want to be there.
But from what I was able to observe over the course of this semester was a lot of community builiding. Especially on  a day where there were only a few boys, but they decided to be class clowns. Instead of getting hot headed about what the boys were doing, and how they were wasting time by standing behind the risers or using a goofy voice, Bethany was able to just laugh with them. I think it is important to have work be the priority, but there is also more to choir than just getting through repertoire and singing it well. I think Bethany has done well to make a great community with her students, giving them a place to be a little goofy and to feel more at ease than the other pressures of school allow.
She has also discussed quite a bit at the hard hit her program has taken because of the ephasis the A.P. classes in the school. The students are basically told that if they don't take A.P. classes that they should expect to get to college. This is not true, nor should the children have so much pressure to perform academically. Yes, there should be emphasis on them doing well. There is not one good teacher out there that would not want students to exceed. But the expectations to be set so high for the kids is crippling. There is no room for mistakes or for being immature. Both things are supposed to be allowed in the age that they are. But there is no allowance made for them anymore. It is sad to hear that there is such a strain on something I find so important for the health and well-being of young people.

Observaton Charlotte 4/7/15

Students. My goodness! How do they have so much to talk about. Bethany is teaching them choreography for their upcoming concert and the students will not stop talking about anything. I have no idea how they have so many topics to discuss! Frankly it is impressive and a little frustrating at the same time. But to me the students have learned to become such great mulri-taskers because of thi terrble habit.They will be talking during the entire class and they still can kind of catch onto what is supposed to be happening.
It was also amazing to me at how much time it had taken to get the students into lines. The decision one what row they wanted to be in was such a high level of commitment you would think Bethany was asking them to pick out their new life partner. It was borderline ridiculous. Once they had all settled into some sort of semblance of a line, the talking continued at full force because they could decide to stand next to whomever they desired.
Where Bethany may not have been using this in the past in her classroom, she had a microphone to help project herself in the classroom. I am not sure exactly my views on this now. I never really felt comfortable with the idea of a microphone in the classroom. For some reason it makes me feel like it distances the teachers and the students because there is a divide of machine and man. But with such a large setting, where there are so many students and only one teacher, the demand for the technology is rather high if not just to save the voice of the instructor. There is not a reason in the world that a profession should affect the health of the worker.

Observation Charlotte: 4/28/15

Bethany actually had a binder with written out vocalises for the students to sing from. It had a fancier piano part that may have been the reason why she used it. But she only used the binder for one of the warm-ups. The rest of what she had done were similar to what she usually will start the class with.

Another interesting thing is that she does not use the number system for her attendance taking. In any other program I have only seen the attendance taken with assigned numbers for each student. Her reasoning behind this that there is so much turnover with the semester changes that it is not worth it to try to assign numbers. I believe this to be fairly sad that the students switch around so much and are not consistantly able to participate in her classes.

I led a sectional with the altos in a practice room on the song "Black Bird." The students I heard were bored with their part because they did not have words and just sang on a syllable while doing the same thing over and over again. I tried to identify with them, but also let them know the perks of singing alto. I tried to make their part seem really cool (which I think it is so it wasn't hard). And by making a couple jokes they seemed to be respond better than what I had anticipated. There were a couple students who just sat in the back and didn't really participate. But then again, if they don't want to participate I don't really have the authority to tell them they have to. I don't really think I have the right to discipline. But I don't want to be a teacher who demands respect but earns it. But there is the careful balance of trying to do this. You don't want to be a push over. There needs to be a boundary.

Observation Charlotte: 4/14/15

For the first time in class I led something. I did the warm-ups. I made sure to wear something that made me distinctly older than them. I know that I have to be concious of how I appear because I am young, and even more so that I look young for my age. As I began the vocalises, I ran through the very typical warm-ups, having the students sing with a bright sound, humming with no tension (not necessarily in that order). The last activity I did was a beatboxing exercise, like the one Maura did in class. I began with the altos, giving them something to vocalize. As I was modelling what they should do, one of the altos says "what the f**k* loud enough for me to hear, but she covered her mouth towards the end of it as if she was just realizing how loud she said because I made sure to look directly at her.
I didn't say anything about it. I am not sure if Bethany heard. But I made sure to give her a very long look telling her that I had noticed it but proceeded with the activity. I don't need to know that they like it or not. I do want them to like it, but I am trying to become very comfortable with the idea that every student will not like me. And even more so that I will not win eveyone over. I think that I did not let what she said bother me or make me feel self-concious about my teaching. I proceeded just as I would have if no one had said anything at all. The social norms were very evident.
But the boys absolutely loved it so I was able to feed off of their positivie energy and make the activity work and have the other students start getting into it.

Observation Charlotte: 3/31/15

Today when we went over the warm-ups the students sang with much better tuning than the very first time I had heard them six weeks ago. The excersise which they began on was "bim bom" where the students sing each on a member of a triad and repeat the syllables "bim bom" with a staccato articulation. I don't know if I find this exercise the most useful because if the students wanted to work on developing their ears, switching between vowels may not be the most condusive to this process. Sustained notes may be the best so that they have more time to hear what they are singing against another singer rather than doing quick notes. If their ears were a little more developed I may find this to be much more useful.
The interesting thing that has happened over the course of the past few weeks is that the sopranos would improve their tuning as the exercise would get higher. Luckily, they stayed fairly together this week in comparison to previous ones. This may be an example of their ears and voice adjusting to the range they are not normally using in the other times of their daily life.
Bethany was also an example of when you are unable to use a piece you had orriginally planned. Their concert is not til the end of their school year. So there was time to go back on what was already chosen. But she made a concious decision to take out a piece and to go with another one. She said that they were trying to decide between two and they went for the harder one. I think it was a smart decision to have another one just incase the piece would be too hard. Also, the way she approached it to students was very good. By saying the PIECE was the problem it let the students know that it wasn't their fault at how they were progressing making them understand that things are a progression rather than blaming themsleves for their inadequate skills.