Choosing Repertoire and the Three “E’s”: Expression, Education, Entertainment

Dr. Rob McWilliams

Emeritus Professor, Yamaha Music Australia

When choosing repertoire to play with our ensembles, I believe it is important to keep performance and learning goals in mind.

Choices are likely to be very dependent on whether you are looking to put together a program for a formal school concert or festival performance, or for an outdoor show at a function such as a school fair or similar. You may also be choosing repertoire with a particular educational or developmental purpose in mind, which may not necessarily be for imminent public presentation. The focus of this article will be towards choosing repertoire for a formal school concert or festival performance. I believe this is where music choices can have the greatest impact on the students’ musical growth and development. My end goal in these performances is always to provide a meaningful and expressively powerful result for the musicians involved. I believe if this can be done successfully, the audience will join us on that musical journey and have an equally rewarding listening experience.

In addition to looking for music that can provide this meaningful and expressively powerful result, I also take into account two other primary issues. First, it is important to consider the player resources you will be working with. These include instrumentation, technical ability, emotional maturity, endurance, etc. It has been my experience that ensemble directors too often choose music that limits players’ ability to be truly connected to the expressive elements of a piece because they are on the edge of their technical capabilities and in “survival mode” to just make it through without stumbling. Including occasional pieces that push this aspect can serve a developmental purpose, but these need to be balanced with more works that are reasonably within the players’ technical abilities.

I am a firm believer that rehearsal energies need to be primarily devoted to focusing player listening – for tone quality, intonation, balance – and the matching of styles, attacks, releases, dynamic shading, phrasing, etc., along with developing an increased awareness of, and sensitivity to, the expressive messages of the music. This is difficult, if not impossible, to achieve if the players’ attention has to be almost totally devoted to technique issues. Unfortunately, it seems that inexperienced musicians often tend to judge the quality of a piece of ensemble music by looking at their individual part in terms of technical interest/note density. In other words, they judge a piece on the “notes per square inch” factor! It is very important that developing musicians are taught, and understand, that this is not an appropriate gauge of a composition’s ultimate quality or value, and that working on music within their technical capability will allow them to focus more on the expressive elements that truly bring the music to life! For further ideas on rehearsal strategies that are geared to developing enhanced player listening, please refer to my previous articles on the Off to a Great Start website: greatstartyamaha.com.

Second, take into account your own passion for the repertoire you are considering. As conductors, we are the primary advocate for the composer’s expressive intentions and the communication of this to our ensembles. For the outcomes to be expressively powerful for the players, we need to “get inside” this aspect of the music so that we can truly bring it to life. This means conductors need to study, understand, and connect to the emotional and expressive aspects of the music they direct (more on strategies for doing this will be featured in a future article).

There is an increasing number of repertoire resources on the market to help conductors in the vital task of music selection. Those such as the Teaching Music Through Performance in Band/Orchestra/Jazz/Choir series have no doubt found a niche in this regard, along with many other texts that address repertoire issues. There are also repertoire lists provided by recognised ensemble directors, professional organisation festival lists, etc. Further, as each new publication cycle for ensemble music comes around, publishers have become very adept at providing and promoting information, recordings, perusal scores, etc., for the large number of newly published works. Judiciously used, all of these resources can play a beneficial role in helping directors make good choices as regards what music to play.

However, before getting caught up in working through the plethora of repertoire possibilities, I think it is more important that directors have a clear philosophical framework on which to base their repertoire decisions. In developing this framework, I believe we need to deal with at least three key “E’s”. When choosing repertoire, I consider these in the following clearly prioritised order; in other words, I wouldn’t move to the next consideration of the three for a particular piece if the consideration(s) before it are not satisfied:

1. Expression

This could have another “E” word attached – that being “Emotion”. For me, the notion of “expression” in music covers the gamut of human experience including, but not limited to, feelings of joy, fear, surprise, sadness, happiness, disgust, anger, anticipation, resignation, terror, and so on.

2. Education

This covers aspects of musical and technical development that the piece under consideration can help to achieve. These can be issues such as teaching a new rhythmic concept, developing greater player independence, building ensemble tone quality, exploring different keys, musical style periods, genres, and so on.

3. Entertainment

This typically refers to how accessible as entertainment the piece is to the audience and/or the players. Is it music they will easily recognise, have heard before, been exposed to in popular culture, etc.? Will it be relatively satisfying on first hearing?

In my view, any piece of music I choose to conduct for a concert or festival setting must first satisfy the criterion of “expression” with a meaningful, musical message that will have the potential to emotionally move and stimulate the players in some significant way. I also look for pieces (or groups of pieces considered together) that explore emotional “range”. Some compositions cover multiple emotional states very effectively and provide a particularly rich expressive experience as a result. When asking directors why a particular piece was chosen, I am sometimes told that the students requested it (often arrangements of a current pop hit), or that the audience will know and like it. For a concert or festival situation, it has been my experience that this approach sells the student experience rather short if the piece doesn’t also satisfy the expressive criteria. Prioritising entertainment value is somewhat akin to allowing students in an English course to choose the books they will read and study based on what they currently know and like rather than what will develop a deeper understanding of literature, language, rhetorical devices, etc. While there may well be a place in school instrumental programs for music from popular culture, I believe it should be seen as an adjunct to repertoire of a more “concert” style that satisfies the primary criteria of potential for expression and emotional range at a deeper level. Quality music that is taught effectively will provide a richer experience for ensemble members and, when presented well in performance, a more deeply rewarding experience for the listener. When you do need to choose some music from popular culture, I would encourage applying the same high expectations regarding quality of arrangement, colourful scoring, etc., as for any piece. I also advocate looking for music with a “timeless” quality. Many arrangements of current pop songs do not meet this criterion. Ask yourself if there will be interest in hearing this piece in twenty years’ time – the answer will often likely be “no”.