Y APPROACH with the children’s choirs I’ve run in various parishes is to plan a period of weekly rehearsals for two months or so, typically with three goals:
(1) Teach them something by ear / by rote, something that they probably already have some familiarity with. Examples might be the melody of “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” for an Advent Lessons & Carols, or the Kyrie or Agnus Dei of a chant Mass setting that’s already being sung in the parish (e.g. “Missa de Angelis”). It’s helpful, I think, to engage their ears — “Oh, yeah, I kinda know this already!” and get them singing through listening, apart from the computation of reading notes & rhythms.
(2) Teach them a simple chant via reading solfege syllables. This works really well, I find, for some of the simpler Communion chant settings in Fr. Weber’s books of English adaptation — because we can focus on the solfege and the interpretation of various neums without getting bogged down in Latin text as well.
(3) Teach them the top line of a brief polyphonic motet. There’s typically not a lot of text, or the text may be repeated, so when the text is in Latin, we work on pronunciation and meaning without becoming overwhelmed by it. Motets give us a chance to work on rhythms, as long as the rhythms aren’t too complex — and I find that children really like the math/counting aspect of figuring them out.
Below is an incomplete list
of SATB motets I’ve employed
over the years for children’s
voices to sing the top line:
— “Nunc dimittis,” Victoria (sung on the Feast of the Presentation; you’ll have to supply the missing chant lines for men’s voices)
— “In te Domine speravi,” Hassler (mentioned earlier by my colleague, Keven Smith)
— William Byrd, “Ave Maria” a5 from the Gradualia (we omitted the “alleluias” to shorten the piece a little; with the kids on the top voice of a five-voice texture, the sound is very rich. Instead of this edition, I engraved my own with note-values halved and the alleluias absent)
— “Benedictus es, Domine,” Lassus (a somewhat tricky piece that may be the most challenging thing I ever tackled with kids)
— “Euge serve bone,” Vecchi (a piece with a refrain, and after the opening verse, the remaining verses are in ATB scoring, so the kids don’t have too much music to learn. Instead of this edition, I engraved my own with note-values halved and the alto line in treble clef)
— “This is the day,” anon. (c.1600 — an excellent piece for Easter)
— “Haec dies,” Ingegneri
— “Angelus Domini descendit,” d’India (instead of this edition, I engraved my own, transposed down a step with note-values halved)
— “Haec dies,” Ravanello (in its SATB version — short, simple, and catchy!)
— “The Beatitudes,” the Orthodox chant as adapted by Richard Proulx (as long as the kids are quite proficient with English — see the Worship III or Worship IV hymnals, or the 1982 Episcopal Hymnal)
Blackboard • I’m sure I’m not alone in this, in utilizing a blackboard (or, these days, a whiteboard). You write musical passages up there and use a pointer of some sort to indicate what you want the kids to sing, or notational concepts that you want to clarify. In my experience, kids work better then they’re focused “up and out” toward a whiteboard, instead of having their heads down, buried in a score. In recent years I’ve taken to printing onto large paper (36” engineering paper, printed up at the local print shop) the chant we’ll be working through, as well as the top line extracted from the motet. I can hang these on the board and use a laser pointer to work through the music — it saves me the hassle of drawing it every week! I try not to draw onto the prints themselves, but utilize the remaining space on the whiteboard if there’s some specific notational moment that we need to break down further. Then in the last couple rehearsals prior to the liturgy, I’ll start them from the board, but then after one or two passes, stand in front of the print and have them look down and sing from their own music.
Unity By One Sheet • The “everyone sings from a single sheet of music” is an idea I borrowed from another choir director, who himself borrowed it from the Renaissance, where everyone would stand around a single music stand and read from the partbooks. It’s helpful for getting the kids to focus, because they’re all looking at the same object.
