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Essentials in
Direct and Teach
Choose the right repertoire for your chorus.
Ron Black, director of the Heart of Texas Chorus, offers his insight to effective repertoire selection.
Updated: 1/4/2008 8:56:04 AM
Repertoire Selection
By Ron Black
There have been many opportunities over the years to obtain great information regarding the selection of music for chapters. There are many great Society resources to learn new information as well. So I decided to write on things that I have learned throughout the years and to just simply pass that information on to you. In my opinion, there are five directives to follow when choosing repertoire for your chapter.
First and foremost, the prime directive is to pick songs that your audience knows.
Songs like “Down By The Old Mill Stream,” “Lida Rose” (and anything else from the Music Man), “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” “Who’s Sorry Now,” and dozens of others. Go to Val Hicks’ Heritage of Harmony Songbook (stock #6061) to get more ideas. Patriotic songs, country western songs, and even some Elvis or Sinatra songs would be great for the audience. Approximately 3/4ths of your songs should be toe-tappers the audience knows.
The secondary directive is to sell the membership on the song before having them learn it.
Figure out a way for them to hear the song and get excited about it before they have to learn it. The level of difficulty of any piece you choose is actually less significant than your success in selling the piece to the chorus members. Here is where your creativity comes in. Find a recording of the song. Get a quartet or VLQ together to sing the song. See if the catalog indicates whether or not a learning CD or tape is available. There are many ways to introduce the song to the chorus before they start learning it…get them fired up! Along with selling the song itself, sell the plan up front to have songs presented in different ways. The whole chorus doesn’t need to sing all the songs. Use quartets or VLQ’s for parts of songs. Use soloists. Use instruments (yes, really!). Have the audience sing along (remember the prime directive).
The third directive is to keep half a dozen favorite songs active forever.
So keep those “favorite” songs active and review them periodically. Yes, you’ll need to clean them up, as old habits are often retained with old songs. And you can utilize the natural excitement that is attached to doing those songs to interject a nice change of pace in any rehearsal. Don’t try to introduce a new arrangement of an old favorite one! You’re better off with singing the old familiar one, even with weak voicing or chords. Just work on singing it better!
The fourth directive is to keep inspirational songs active forever.
The “Star Spangled Banner” and/or “O Canada” should never leave the repertoire. “Keep America Singing” and perhaps “Teach the Children to Sing” are also barbershop repertoire staples. Inspirational songs such as “Let There Be Peace on Earth” or “I Believe” have tremendous effect on audiences. Some chapters choose to include songs that are specifically religious (this is a chapter by chapter basis…know your membership and whether or not sacred / religious themed songs may offend).
The fifth directive is to plan a variety of contestable songs and non-contestable songs.
As you consider your repertoire selection into the first four directives, choose your songs to fit into these three groups. You should have at least four solid barbershop, contestable songs in performance ready condition at all times. Additionally, you should have several solid barbershop, non-contestable songs in your repertoire as well. These would include barbershop “umbrella” songs that you would not use in competition because they have soloists with chorus accompaniment, are patriotic or religious, or have staging or instruments or other factors that would make them marginal for the contest stage. These two categories can easily be 2/3 or more of your total repertoire. Thirdly, songs that do not fall under the “umbrella” are entirely appropriate for a chapter’s repertoire.
I can certainly report that maintaining the above five directives is a significant challenge to every musical director. I’ve certainly not succeeded in achieving my own five directives at all times, for sure. But I do recognize the success achieved when I’ve maintained all these directives.
And where do you get arrangements of these songs? From your Barbershop Harmony Society! You can order single copies of a variety of charts so you can study and review them personally. This link will connect you directly to the Catalog of all published and unpublished songs:
http://www.barbershop.org/web/groups/public/documents/pages/pub_id_088721.hcsp
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