There are many reasons for repeating repertoire from year to year.
I’m listening to my son learn the high school “fight song” clarinet part – and so I’m thinking about music we play or sing again and again. Is there value in repeating songs from year to year?
I know many choir directors who would say no. They might argue that there is more value in exposing students to more and different repertoire, expanding their horizons. They might argue that students get bored with singing the same songs. They might argue that programming “repeats” lacks creativity.
But there are several arguments that convince me that repeating songs from year to year is of great value to both students and your choral program.
- Repeating music engages audiences. There are people who can’t wait to hear the marching band play the fight song, as well as about a dozen other songs the band plays every year. You can have the same relationship with a choir audience.
- Repeating music builds community. Specifically, it builds community across ages and graduation years of students. My students from fifteen years ago can and do sing with my students of today.
- Repeating music builds excellence. The skills we build in our students can carry over and be passed on by repeating the music in which they learned those skills.
- Repeating music empowers students. Students can teach each other more readily with music they already know well. I can teach a piece to students as I’m sight reading it.* Students, generally, cannot. But with music they have already sung, they can step up and become leaders.
I don’t advocate for wholesale repetition of an entire book; but as with a marching band, repeated repertoire can form a core portion of the repertoire, to balance with new and diverse repertoire to learn.
* I don’t want to, but I can.