Provoking Meaning: Five Key Questions Dr. Jerry Custer
Our choral art form is unique: it is group story telling that unites music and words in a way that heightens the meaningful impact of each. The corporate aspect of choral music making—some- thing that’s done together by a host of different individuals, but at the same moment in time and in the same place—powerfully magnifies and intensifies the impact of the story we ultimately share with the audience.
As choral artists, we always seek to express some- thing profoundly true about the human condition: who we are, where we’ve come from, who we want to be, where we hope to go, what matters most to us, and so forth. We want to create real- time, tangible beauty that transforms those who bring it to birth it as well as those who ultimately receive it. We want to engage both the singers and the listeners in an encounter that is active rather than passive on both ends of the communications circuit. And we long to be part of something truly transcendent, an artistic expression that bridges the gulf that all too often separates and isolates people. Even if it only lasts for three minutes, we want to create an experience of community. But there can be no authentic community with- out communication, if by “communication” we mean an exchange where we give away what we have to those who receive it. And that, of course, is really the heart of the problem. For if commu- nication is going to be honest, we must come to terms with two unavoidable truths: first, that we cannot give what we do not own, and second, that ownership always comes with a price that we ourselves must pay. Otherwise, we’re just artistic shoplifters, trafficking in stolen goods.
How do we pay the price? By doing the work that’s required to understand the meaning of the text we sing. As conductors, an important aspect of our work is empowering our singers to suc- cessfully grapple with the texts in front of them, to help them learn how to wrestle meaning out of the words until those words are owned by the ones who sing them. We need to incorporate the discipline of mining text for meaning into our own score preparation, of course, but above all we need to find ways to make it a regular part of
23 the rehearsals we conduct.
One effective way to do this is to ask questions. In my own work as a choral conductor, there are the five key questions (groups of questions, re- ally) that I regularly ask my singers to help facili- tate this process:
First, who speaks these words? Who is the author? Whose words are these we find in our mouth? Who are we representing in our singing?
Second, who listens? To whom are we speaking? Who is the intended audience for our message? Are they likely to be open to the message? Why or why not?
Third, what’s the message we’re sharing? What’s its content, its essence? What’s its nature? What type of message are we’re singing--an exhortation, a correction, a re- minder, a love song, a prophecy?
Fourth, why proclaim these particular words to this particular audience in this way? What’s our motive for sharing them? What do we hope to accomplish? How do we hope the hearers will be different as the result of what we do?
Finally, what does this message mean to us? How does it resonate with our own lives, reflect our own experience? What elements or aspects of our own story can we read into or find in this story?
By illustration, consider this early poem by W. B. Yeats, a text set by a number of composers (including me):
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping like the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
Choral
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