conducting journal

I taught the undergraduate choral conducting class at UConn last spring and it was a hoot.  I assisted the basic and instrumental conducting classes under Dr. Renshaw, and I've taught conducting to high school students in a smaller way, so at least I wasn't going in absolutely cold.  Still, I took two semesters of vocal pedagogy before I taught anyone singing; I got a degree in music education before they let me into a classroom to teach music.  But conducting pedagogy is not a topic that is directly addressed very often.  So I fell back on the thing that most teachers eventually do: how I was taught.

I have the benefit of not being a very good musician (musical intelligence will be addressed a couple of Mondays from now, followed shortly by Gordon and aptitude testing).  When you're mediocre at something but love it, you work very hard to learn and get better, you try everything you can to improve.  And that made me learn how to learn.  In planning my syllabus for the undergrad course, I picked the things that helped me the most, and assigned those tasks to my students

In my master's program, we were loosely required to write a conducting journal.  It was a suggestion, really, more than a requirement, but I'm a woman who follows instructions so I diligently kept a conducting journal.  I also happen to be a woman who loves to write about things I love, so it was easy and pleasant for me.

When I was writing a conducting journal, I wrote about scores I was preparing, other conducting students, conducting class, lessons, conductors I performed under, teachers, performances, recordings, and even non-musical life experiences that related to conducting.  Sort of like this blog now, though I also try to write about research and more big-picture sorts of things.

I assigned a conducting journal to my undergrads.  It was worth five percent of their grade, graded on "thoroughness." Basically, the more they wrote about, and the more accurate information it contained, the higher the grade.  Not a big deal, but it could make the difference between and B+ and an A-, you know?   Those who wrote really thorough journals made the most improvements in the actual conducting.  My whole point with the class was that conducting was about preparation, so the more preparation you did, the better you would conduct.  A journal was really just a place to track and organize your preparation.

I find that I conduct better when I keep a journal, just like my students.  I don't know how many other conductors use journaling as a tool for preparation.  I love it, but of course, it does speak to some of my strongest learning styles: verbal and intrapersonal (as my sister puts it, "strong opinions and a big vocabulary").  One of the many projects for this summer is the preparation of scores for the fall.  Among them is the Caesar Franck Mass in A, the source of the famous "Panis Anglicus."



Mmmhhh... Renee Fleming...

Anyway, I'm going to try posting at least some of the things that I'd ordinarily journal about in preparing a piece like that.  There are a few reasons.

First, it will give me a chance to demonstrate specific examples and further explicate ideas that are relatively esoteric.

Second, this is the first multi-movement work I've prepared for a real performance, in its entirety, from scratch.  Other pieces I've done as exercises in conducting lessons with no actual performing, performed only excerpts, or had already sung the piece and was therefore familiar with it to some degree.  So I'm rather excited to be applying all that theoretical training to practical use and quite keen to do it right.  I feel some responsibility to post true and accurate things on the blog, so perhaps having it out here will be even more incentive to do it well.

Third, posting online has the possibility of reaching other conductors who have performed the work and can let me know if they found the same things I did.  That would be nice.