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Choral Conducting

This document provides an introduction to a workshop on choral conducting. It discusses the importance of conducting skills and outlines some key aspects of conducting including: the functions of the right and left hands; conducting patterns for time signatures; and techniques such as maintaining clear gestures, recognizing pitch inaccuracies, using facial expressions, and establishing rapport with accompanists. The workshop aims to enhance participants' conducting skills through exploring standard practices and developing expressive qualities in music.

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Sean Irvin Miranda
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370 views5 pages

Choral Conducting

This document provides an introduction to a workshop on choral conducting. It discusses the importance of conducting skills and outlines some key aspects of conducting including: the functions of the right and left hands; conducting patterns for time signatures; and techniques such as maintaining clear gestures, recognizing pitch inaccuracies, using facial expressions, and establishing rapport with accompanists. The workshop aims to enhance participants' conducting skills through exploring standard practices and developing expressive qualities in music.

Uploaded by

Sean Irvin Miranda
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Choral

Conductin
g
A
A workshop
workshop facilitated
facilitated by
by

Onum Gilbert
Gilbert
Phone:
Phone: (+234)7039059605
(+234)7039059605
E-Mail: [email protected]
E-Mail: [email protected]

First
First edition:
edition: December
December 2010
2010
Introduction:
As with every aspect of music, conducting is a skill that
needs to be developed. Unfortunately, just hands full of
conductors in most of our choirs and chorales today, have had
one form of formal training or the other. The vast majority of
these conductors, learnt on the job after series of
embarrassments, some others, drew experiences from watching
their local choirmasters/conductors. Some of whom may not have
been very good role models. Enhancing ones conducting skills in
such a circumstance could be very difficult.

Conducting
Conducting involves the use of musical sign language made
up of hands, arm and facial gestures rather than speech, to
communicate with the musicians in the ensemble or chorale. This
tends to reflect the individual’s personality in the conducting
as his feelings are articulated on the piece of music rendered.
This is not to say that standard practices do not exist but that
no two choirmasters can be the same even if the use the same
standard.

The functions of the right and left hands


The function of the right hand is to beat time, while the
left hand is to highlight in some way the expressive qualities
of the music. The right hand indicates dynamics (by varying the
size of the beat) and the left hand is employed by the conductor
to deal with the beginning and end of a phrase.

Important things to note


Downbeat/upbeat: the downbeat is the beat immediately after the
bar or in other words the first accented beat of a measure.
While the upbeat is the beat just before another bar
Ictus:
Cutoff:

Conducting patterns
Timing;

- 4/4 pattern can also be used in 4/2, 4/8 and fast 12/8

- 3/4 pattern can also be used in 3/2, 3/8, 3/16 and fast 9/8
- 2/4 pattern also used in 2/2, 2/8

Skills/Technique:

- Don’t sing with the choir


Your singing distracts you from helping your performers, since
you can’t hear well while you are singing along.

- Be able to read a full score


This would enable you to be able to sing all parts so you know
when a part is going off, and you are able to make corrections
where necessary.

- Be familiar with a wide range of musical styles

- Use clear and unambiguous gestures


Maintain a clear gesture that your musicians will be able to
understand. Your gestures should be able to make the performance
better and not to mare the performance.

- Recognize Pitch inaccuracy


In other words, you know when the choir has gone off-key as most
us would call it. And also to know if a modulation in a piece of
music is been observed accurately.

- Facial expression/posture
Your face must represent the song/music so the choir can
understand how to sing the song and also you must position
yourself in such a ways as to portray self-confidence, leadership
and seriousness. Don’t burry your face while conducting: This is,
so that you can look into their eyes and communicate dynamics,
new tempo, and rests. You are also able to identify choristers
that are participating or not.

- Establish a rapport with the accompanists


To ensure smooth accompaniment of the music, correct tuning of
keys, playing of intros, interludes etc

Dos and don’ts

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