Choral Composers Give Advice

Many contemporary choral composers have provided us with ideas to use when teaching our students to compose. Teachers can use these ideas down to create warm-up exercises, explorations to help students analyze repertoire, and long-term projects that take place inside and outside the choral classroom. A portion of a class period once a week, or even just a few minutes each day, might be devoted to composing exercises that build students’ knowledge, vocal skill, and love for choral music.

Finding Inspiration.For James Mulholland (2007), creative inspiration comes from experimenting at a piano. Eric Whitacre (2019), on the other hand, finds that the evocative quality of chords sung by people inspires him, experimenting with a great variety of chords and ancillary tones to find different emotive qualities. He practices these chords with his choral group, building and recording each separately to create a library of sonic moments for future use. Gwyneth Walker (2007) wrote that she begins her compositions by mapping out the chord progressions and form, so practice mapping these can be valuable experiences for learners. Andre Thomas (2007) wrote that he can be inspired to compose by a series of chords, a particular rhythm, or the musical form of a piece that he enjoys. He recommends that composers keep an idea journal of just such musical ideas.

Like Larsen, Childs, and Mulholland, the many composers who wrote chapters for Composers on Composing for Choir (Wine, 2007) suggest that we think about introducing students to choral music through listening experiences. Many of these composers recommend that inspiration should come listening to specific pieces by Bach, Mozart, Palestrina, Haydn, Handel, and also Dawson, Nystedt, Ligeti, Barber, Howell, and Walton. John Rutter (2007) recommends that students listen to Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, but wrote that “life wouldn’t be the same without Igor Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms and the Maurice Durufle Requiem” (p. 174). Choral music, solo vocal, opera and musical theater, popular and folk genre repertoire can all help them to love all the ways that the voice can impact and inspire us. I believe that we should find composers and choirs from non-European traditions including Fabian Obispo, the Senegalese Julien Jouga Chorale, the Creole Choir of Cuba, the Peiyang Chorus of Tianjin University, and the Zamir Choir of Boston. These choral ensembles can offer the choir teacher and student composers many innovative ideas.

Working with Text.For several composers, inspiration must come from meaningful poetry and prose. Morten Lauridsen (2007) recommends that students “read poetry and build a vast personal poetry library” (p. 77). David Childs (2007) wrote that everything comes from the text which, in turn, must be individually meaningful to the composer. He recommends spending time to discuss the meaning of the words to uncover all of the meanings, implications, important moments, and the words that suggest movement and stasis (p. 7). Gwyneth Walker (2007) also believes that the most important thing a choral composer can do is to illuminate the text. Her composing process is inspired by the central images or metaphors. She wrote, “It is important that these poetic images translate clearly into musical expression. Often, the accompaniment is the central means of creating imagery. The tenor of the poem may be established within the opening measures of accompaniment.”

James Mulholland (2007) recommended that composers explore speaking the text over and over, experimenting with emphasizing different words in each repetition, to find various meanings in the text. He wrote that “the music should not distract from the poem but act as a thesaurus for appreciation and understanding” (p. 130). The text can dictate the meter, overall tempo, and the speed of the rhythm to the composer, but he advised that the most emotional moments in a text must be examined carefully to avoid cliche musical gestures. Mulholland recommended that students should practice finding the natural scansion of the text (p. 131), then create a graphic representation of the metrical pattern. Students learn the “slash and x” style to represent the ictus (stressed) and nonictus (nonstressed) syllables, in which stressed words should be marked with a “/” slash. The stressed words that are “demoted” from the most important stressed words receive a “^л” sign while unstressed receive an “x.”

On the other hand, Ola Gjeilo (Schmidt, 2012) finds inspiration from texts but uses their sonic elements, the vowel and consonant sounds, to create expressive meaning in his music. Schmidt wrote of Gjeilo’s composing process of working with texts: “(1) breaking apart the text, (2) diverting from setting words with traditional descriptive phrase shape and word stress, and (3) working to create a musical atmosphere” (p. 12). The text serves as a vehicle for conveying whatever meaning that Gjeilo wishes to convey. Schmidt quoted Gjeilo saying, “The words, for me, are more of a servant to the music . . . rather than the other way around” (p. 12).

Reflecting on the Process and Product.Gwyneth Walker (2007) wrote that “Writing music is never easy, even for accomplished composers with professional careers. Time is needed for reflection, criticism, and experimentation, which allows the imagination to ‘play’ ” (p. 231). Reflection should take place during the composing process and after a piece of music has been performed live (which can, of course, happen in the choral rehearsal room). David Childs (2007) recommends that students take time for musical ideas to “ferment” in the mind as they create. Randall Stroope (2007), similarly, wrote that students should take the time to think about their compositions after a performance, letting the piece “cook” in their minds, and then think how and if to revise the work (p. 196).