Yesterday, I wrote about how much music benefits from percolation, especially in the form of multiple performances.
Why not, then, program less music? I tend to program between 15 and 20 pieces of music for my ensembles each year. Why not cut that to 10 or even 8, and repeated them in multiple performances, allowing growth in the time between performances.
There are certainly models for this: competitive marching bands keep the same program, and carefully polish and hone it in the course of the season. The same is true for competitive show choirs. And the model is true at professional levels, where ensembles might take an identical program on tour for an entire year, performing it dozens of times.
For me, there are several reasons not to minimize my students’ annual program in the pursuit of excellence:
- There is a spectrum of music to explore students to each year, and you can’t get the full spectrum if you limit the amount of repertoire they sing.
- It’s not unusual for every student has a different favorite piece in the repertoire. Limiting the repertoire might mean eliminating the piece that lights up a student.
- There is another kind of growth, beyond the percolation growth that comes from multiple performances of the same music. This musical growth is best encouraged by exposure to lots of repertoire, honing the ear and music literacy.
This is confirmed by the ensembles I mentioned above: in each case, the repeated program is offset by a wider repertoire elsewhere in the year. Competitive marching bands put away their show in November and have months to explore more repertoire, and the same is true for competitive show choirs; an ensemble like Chanticleer might have a single tour program for a concert season, but they offset it with multiple concerts of different repertoire in their home.
Perhaps, then, this is an ideal solution: create a shorter program that will be repeated throughout the year, and use it to study the growth that comes from repetition. (Then, program opportunities to repeat the program.) Balance that with new repertoire throughout the year.