Sine Qua Non is one of my favorite Latin expressions – it literally means, “Without which, nothing.” You don’t see it so much anymore – the decline and fall of Latin language classes has seen to that – but it’s a nice one to have in your pocket. Maybe the best English term is “deal breaker” but there’s more negativity in “deal breaker” than in sine qua non, so I’ll stick with the Latin.
I can’t think of just one sine qua non that informs my teaching philosophy in the rehearsal space, so I’m doing a series of them for the next week or so. For each of these, I consider my rehearsal a failure if I do not honor them.
Musical Structure
There are lots of different prisms for understanding choral music. Period-based performance practice. Text. Composer biography. Musical structure is how I make sense of the music I am performing. Whether it’s form, harmonic structure, harmonic rhythm, timbre, voicing, or any number of other musical characteristics, it’s how the music works that guides my understanding.
Until my students can describe the music in structural terms – using music theory, pictures, words, or any other description – they are unable to really interpret the piece.
Without musical structure, nothing. Sine Qua non.