Undergraduate Choral Conducting Blog

This was a really fun piece to conduct. As I was mentioning to some of my classmates, this piece didn't really click for me until I heard a few recordings (I suppose that's cheating). The rhythm makes sense to me when I hear it, but somehow starting with the score was a stumbling block for me. It was too abstract and technical. So what I did was to listen to the piece over and over and move to it. I found that the rhythms had very specific feelings in my body. The simple meter felt very grounded, and the compound meter felt very lilting. I had a distinct image of a rock skimming on water - how there will be a few skips that are equal, and then the rock will catch the water just right and stay airborne for a little longer.

I guess what I'm getting at is that this was a piece I really had to get in my bones and know it intuitively rather than dissecting the score in an analytical way. I did that as well of course, but it only made sense to me after really feeling the phrasing.

To be honest, I was terrified of conducting this piece before I really dug into it. I thought I would bomb badly, but once I started getting more comfortable with it, I was excited about it.

One thing for me that was tough was getting back in once I lost my place. I saw that others in the class did a better job of this. What techniques do you use to reorient yourself when you get lost?