You’ve seen it in your smarter–a slow slip towards disengagement. They master things more quickly, and then they’re “bored.”
I will admit that an ensemble can’t move together as quickly as every individual might be able to, for lots of reasons. However, there’s no reason to be bored in rehearsal. Here are a few suggestions to give those poor bored students.
- Analyze. When I turned in scores at the end of a year in Gold Company, they were covered in chordal analysis. I learned to write by observing the masters, and I did that observation when the basses, sopranos, and altos were having 2 minute mini-sectionals in rehearsal.
- Predict. Make it a game to predict what your conductor is going to say next. Tone, vowel, cutoff, articulation, note accuracy, intonation…can you anticipate what she’s going to do? If you can’t, listen harder. Alice Parker told me that when she did her Masters degree in conducting with Robert Shaw at Juilliard, the coursework was a shambles – but traveling around Manhattan watching Shaw work was a nonstop masterclass in rehearsal technique just by trying to hear what he heard.
- Memorize. Memorizing music ahead of schedule is a great way to help push the ensemble faster, and challenge your mind to work more quickly.
- Lead. You simply can’t act bored and be a leader. Leadership requires engagement, assistance, and all sorts of other behaviors that can’t coexist with boredom. By behaving as if you’re bored, you are abrogating your responsibility as a leader.
Are there times when a singer has the potential for boredom in rehearsal? Yes.
The important thing is that no human being can remain bored if their personality leads with curiosity. There is always more to learn. There are always more steps to climb.