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3 Preparing for Rehearsals As we approach a performance, we need to take this as our ¤rst rule: that every bit of work which properly can be done in advance must be completed before the¤rst rehearsal. All the score study, all the planning, all the conferences with concertmaster and principals, all the basic interpretive decisions that need not wait—these should precede your ¤rst meeting with the orchestra, if you hope to take maximal advantage of every minute of rehearsal time. Try to visit and observe the orchestra you are to conduct some weeks before you have to rehearse them. Get acquainted with them. If they have a regular conductor, watch him work with them, and make notes, especially about his terminology. While there should be no difference between what “choral” and “instrumental” conductors do in an artistic situation, there is a critical divergence in the language each uses. Listen to what an orchestra conductor says to the strings. He uses words like “vibrate”and “sing”; in a given case, he asks them to “play more at the tip,” or “use more bow,” or “less bow,” and so on. Get both the phrases and the results they produce into your ears. Make this language as much yours as you have the specialized phrases you use to get speci¤c results from your chorus. The Overriding Concept of the Work Your ¤rst responsibility, of course, is to develop your concept of the work to be performed, and the style in which you want to present it. As you already know from your experiences with choral music, you must study until you know the proportions and momentum of each movement and passage; with these shapes in your mind, you can choose tempos, observe how climaxes are approached and delivered, and determine how movements are related. You can make preliminary decisions, at least, about such matters as articulation, dynamics , ritards, and phrasing. Judgments about style come easier if you study and learn a lot of music by the same composer and his contemporaries. Beware of getting your interpretation from a recording of the work you are to conduct! Avoid imitating someone else. Listen instead to other works from the same historical period. Get the sounds of that time into your ears, and the shapes of those works into your mind; then apply what you have heard and learned to the case at hand. (If you do listen to a recording of it, make sure you try out four or ¤ve other versions too.) When you study, use a full score. The music the orchestra plays should be considered right from the beginning. Remember that the orchestra is not just a composite accompanist: much of the most important material has been voiced into the orchestra, and there may even be passages in which the choir “accompanies” the players. At the least, the nature of the orchestral material will affect your decisions about tempos, balances, articulation, and other features of your interpretation . And watch the “seams!” In longer pieces of music, you will ¤nd—especially in working with an orchestra—that much of your conducting responsibility will derive from how you control these transition points, the “seams” between tempos, dynamic levels, textures, etc. The way you move from one tempo to another , the way you signal new attacks, the association between one articulation pattern and another: consider all these in terms of the relationships they represent between sections. Score Preparation The very appearance of a full score can be intimidating to the choral conductor. All those staves! Can one really follow twenty or more of them at once, transposing clarinets and tracking violas through the alto clef? Like all skills, reading an orchestra score is largely a matter of practice. The instruments are arranged in families (except in a few recent works): by custom, the woodwinds appear at the top, the brasses next, the percussion below them, and the strings at the bottom. The choir may be notated between the brass and strings or—sometimes—in the middle of the string staves. If there are soloists, they usually are shown just above the chorus. A typical nineteenth century full score could appear as follows, from the top staff to the bottom: (Piccolo) Flutes I and II Oboes I and II (English Horn) Clarinets I and II (Bass Clarinet) Bassoons I and II (Contrabassoon) French Horns I and II French Horns III and IV Trumpets I and II Trombones I and II Tuba Timpani Other...

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