Score study is commonly recognized as an important component of planning for successful and effective rehearsal. While much of what conductors prepare for often involves paying attention to dynamics, entrances, cutoffs, and practicing conducting patterns, this reading will focus more on how analysis can help prepare for rehearsals on two fronts: musicality and anticipating difficulties.

Musicality

Form:

Looking at the form of a piece can be very helpful in deciding on an efficient order for learning. Noting repeating sections can be particularly helpful in this process. In pieces where there is not much repetition, it can be useful to determine section breaks so that the music can be rehearsed in chunks.

Additionally, form can help determine the overall shape of a piece. Looking for climax(es) can help in creating meaningful music even during the learning process. It may be useful to create a form diagram mapping tension and importance to create a better conceptualization of what you want to portray in the piece as a whole.

Meter:

While listener perception of meter is often different from that of the performers, this reading focuses on the importance of meter for the director and ensemble. Meters can often be a good indicator of where strong beats lie, but also where typical strong beats may be subverted.

Syncopation is also important to note. Is the use of syncopation more to play against the beat that is being defined or to ambiguate the beat itself? If the latter, what might be necessary to help the singers keep track of a steady beat across the ensemble to ensure coordination?

Dissonance:

Dissonance is often used in contemporary choral music as an expressive element. Noting these dissonances and leaning into them, especially when they occur on downbeats, can really bring out their effect. Also pay attention to the role of each voice in a dissonant chord and decide where dissonances should be brought out or act more as decoration.

Anticipating difficulties

A big part of preparing for rehearsals is anticipating difficulties an ensemble may have so that the director is better equipped to help fix them.

Rhythm and Meter:

Rhythm and meter are often the basis of musical learning and are frequently the more difficult portions of sight singing. Asymmetrical and changing meters should be addressed early on in the learning of a piece. In addition, syncopation and uneven divisions of the beat are often difficult to count on a first read-through.

Tonality and Modulation:

It is important to note the tonality of a piece, especially if it is modal or if it uses a pitch collection other than major or minor. Helping singers understand where the anchors (usually do, scale degree 1 and so, scale degree 5) are in the key can make sure they have something to return to when they lose where they are.

Modulations can also be tricky when learning a piece. In choral music, many modulations happen by whole step or half step, but not all of them. Make sure to note where modulations happen, what the relationship of the new key is to the old key, and whether parts are leaping during a modulation. It is also useful to consider how common tones are reinterpreted as new scale degrees between the keys.

Harmony:

Harmonic difficulties mostly happen on two fronts: added tones and cluster chords and chromatic chords. Added tones and cluster chords, especially when a part is leaping into a particularly clustered chord, can make it difficult for singers to find their notes. Understanding where the dissonance in a chord is and rehearsing it can help make sense of it. With chromatic chords, it is important to note which voice parts are on chromatic notes; it is often particularly helpful to think of the chord in terms of how it resolves.

Lines:

Some directors skip many of the above steps and focus only on the lines each part needs to sing. This can be successful on its own, but it is often less efficient than an approach that considers the context of the lines being sung. It is also important to remember that lines are going to be sung in the context of meter, tonality, and harmony, so focusing on these first can also assist in anticipating line difficulties. That being said, there are things to look out for when anticipating difficulties in individual lines:

• Highly chromatic lines – any time there are a lot of accidentals in a line, that is a pretty good indicator that you may need to figure out the best way to make sense of it and how it could be explained.
• Difficult leaps – these include, but are not limited to: leaps larger than a fifth, leaps of a fourth/fifth that are not so-do (scale degrees 5-1) or do-so (scale degrees 1-5), leaps to non-chord tones, and leaps to chromatic pitches.

Warm-ups

Warmups are a useful way to teach difficult portions of repertoire separate from actually rehearsing them. This can save rehearsal time, as the ensemble can warm up their voices while also becoming familiar with the music they will sing later. Patterns and sequences in music can be easily augmented into warm-ups, which are typically taught by ear and then repeated in several keys.

Some general examples include:

• Practicing leaps of specific intervals in a scale
  • Ex: Do-mi-re-fa-mi-so… / Do-fa-re-so-mi-la…
• Using harmonic accompaniment to give context to warmups
• Using a metronome to practice off-beat entrances or lines
• Doing minor scales and arpeggios
• Altering scales to fit modes of a song
  • Ex: Sing a major scale on solfège and then change fa to fi to practice for a piece in lydian
• Creating and working through rhythm sheets (looking at rhythmic cells specific to a piece)
• Moving to music – whether that is conducting, walking around, or patting/tapping

Here is one example of a difficult section in The Embers Tell by Mattea Williams transformed into a warmup.

Excerpt:

Warmup: Note the context of the lower notes (which could be sung or played). The chromatic pitch at the end also makes this a great warmup to be continued moving down by half step.