Music Theory in the Choral Classroom

Everyone has had different experiences with music theory in choir, and let’s face it: a vast majority of students are not joining choir to learn music theory. Compared to those in band and orchestra, students in choir are more likely to learn by rote and less likely to be taught music-reading skills. In part because of the many things vying for time and attention during rehearsal, many choir directors shy away from teaching music theory. As a result, choral singers are often stereotyped as being weak in music theory, or even unable to read music at all.

Despite these factors, music theory and aural skills concepts are part of the National Association for Music Educators’ standards for ensembles. The standards cite skills such as composition/arrangement and improvisation, understanding theoretical and structural characteristics, music reading, and analysis of musical devices. They even ask students to explain how analysis of structures and context affects performance. Many of these skills are difficult to accomplish without some understanding of music theory.

While many teachers employ strategies such as ‘Theory Thursdays’ or specific theory lessons, these are often disconnected from the music being performed in the ensemble. This can lead to less efficiency in terms of time and can also lead to frustration in students as they don’t see the concepts applied to music. This text will present two helpful solutions: using warmups and teaching music theory concepts through repertoire.

Warmups:

Warmups are a great way to teach different types of scales and modes and arpeggiated chords. So many warmups are already based around arpeggios or scales, so modifying them and using solfège to explain chords or scales can easily be added. Some examples could look like:

• Many contemporary choral pieces will use chord loops for sections of the piece. An arpeggiated warmup going through these chord changes could orient students to harmonic context and open up conversations about chord progressions and phrases. (i.e. – I-IV-V-I – do-mi-so-mi-fa-la-do-la-so-ti-re-ti-do-mi-so-mi-do)
• If a song is in a minor key, arpeggiated warmups could be done in minor on solfège, either using la-based minor to explain the chords or using do-me-so and explaining the difference between it and the major scale
• If a song is modal, the choir could start with one of many scalar warmups on solfège, and the conductor could then modify the solfège to teach the mode (or it could be done using the major scale and starting/ending on a different solfège)

Additionally, warmups are a good time to practice group or solo improvisation and harmonization.

• With improvisation, you can start with a melody or rhythm pattern and have the choir repeat back and change it somehow. This could start as a group improvisation exercise and then move into having students work in small groups or partners, each creating short phrases and having another student repeat them back with some kind of change. This kind of improvisation is relatively low-pressure and allows students to try things out before being asked to improvise longer phrases or improvise in the context of a piece.
• Antecedent and consequent phrases are something that many students who have listened to a lot of music understand intuitively to some extent. Giving an example of an antecedent phrase and asking students to sing back a consequent phrase is a good way to practice this skill. Talk about phrases that go up having a response that goes down, or use parallel periods to practice going to different cadences.
• Harmonization can happen with any melody. Maybe it starts with a simple folk tune and playing a note a third above and asking part of the choir to continue singing the third, or maybe you just ask the choir to harmonize as a large group.
• You can also practice harmonizing by giving different parts of the choir a different note in a chord, moving some parts up or down by half step to change the chord or having sections switch notes to talk about inversions.

Whatever you do, it can be a lot of fun and a little less scary to improvise in a group, and that can easily be done through warmups.

Repertoire:

Music theory and aural skills are not only important for sight reading, as music theory concepts can also be applied to repertoire. Depending on the piece, there are often concepts that work well to teach using a song. Some common examples include triads, suspensions, cadences, hemiola, and phrase structure. Pieces that use these concepts and others can be found on the Choral Music Theory Database, which tags pieces with different concepts from music theory that can be found in the piece.