Conducting Review: Rodney Eichenberger

Enhancing Musicality Through Movement

Mr. Eichenberger demonstrates with various choirs how the involvement of motion can dramatically improve the quality, legitimacy and vibrancy of a note. It gives the singer a more correct understanding of the production of their tones. He demonstrates with several choirs of multiple ages, but concentrates on young choirs, probably because the voices are more flexible and will present his concepts in more dramatic fashion.

He begins with the concept of gesture. Children learn that hand and arm motions have meaning, and even when learning to talk, gestures seem to add meaning. Even the way we say words is affected by their meanings. When using compatible gestures, this affect is further pronounced. If a gesture opposite the meaning of a given word is tried, the connotation of the gesture often prevails over the known meaning of the word.

Distance, size and position of a gesture­all spatial concepts­affect a singer's tonal production. For instance, moving the hands in circles keeps the tone spinning; raising the hands while holding a pitch does not necessarily produce a crescendo, but does seem to have a positive, painless affect on vitality and intensity of the pitch.

A typical audition of a Mendelssohn piece shows what most choirs will bring to the vocal interpretation of a piece. Eichenberger then has them rotate their hands in circles so that they come up in front of the body (promoting proper breath support), and the size of circle affected the dynamics. On the high G ("zerint"), he had the sopranos point across the room to solve the pitch discrepancy. This, however did not solve tone quality; he coordinates both circling and pointing to produce the desired result­a noticeable difference­in the quality of the high note.

To solve the staccato notes from the B-section of the piece, an upward "poking" gesture kept those notes supported (and, by extension, in pitch), and the sustained notes kept vibrancy with an upward "string-pulling" gesture (the hand turns over and "lifts" the pitch it had just been "poking" up from beneath).

He also addresses the fact that singers often sing "on autopilot," and sometimes using an abnormal abbreviation of a phrase will help when trying to call attention to a specific issue. He asserts that it is important to sing passages in tempo without extending any note values to get the choir out of the automatic habit of singing through to the end of a phrase. The tendency is to think of a downward phrase as towards the floor; upward gestures help this problem. "Movement obviously makes a big difference in drawing a singer's attention to musical subtlety."

He demonstrates with a more mature church choir singing "Give Me Jesus" that a small circular motion enlivens the pitch (it had been rather flat-sounding); "pulling" an imaginary string up and spinning the fingers of their other hand around their ear promoted spin in the tone. This made the soft singing much better. The same song, sung by another youth choir, was paired with lifting gestures to infuse vitality; this inadvertently created a tendency to sharp. To solve this problem, he had them walk around as pitches changed, but stand still on held notes.

"Walking to the music automatically energizes the singer's body, tending to draw attention away from a conscious concern for the mechanics of singing." The idea is to give singers a physical awareness of phrasing, vibrant tone, and improved intonation. Lifting of arms on long notes maintained vibrancy and pitch; walking kept the lines in a sense of motion; pitch was unquestionably improved. The flatness of their tone was completely solved. Lacking space, walking in place accomplishes the same thing (stepping forward), as long as the arms can move. Walking reinforces rhythm, and hand lifts define and energize the long notes and the tone (as long as they don't rise above the sternum).

Movement (or implied movement) helps the novice singer to find the correct pitches. If he can't hear the correct pitch, a "winding-up" motion will correct the pitch; such reinforcing motion makes such an impression that correct pitch becomes much easier for the singer to repeat. In dealing with middle-school male voices (whose voices have change), it is important to help these boys find their singing voices for everyone's sakes. Eliminating­one at a time­those voices not finding the pitches, then reintroducing them and "winding" the pitch up in unison singing (then celebrating them) reinforces confidence.

Eichenberger then proceeds into a summary of material covered, showing each previously demonstrated motion in other songs. Lifting, pointing (both direction and distance), shaping­all these types of gestures affect pitch and quality of tone. "Using exercises in which the choir copies the conductor's gesture engages the member visually, kinetically and aurally." Often interrupt your conducting with changes of gesture. Large, round gestures reinforce support; tempo change and size of the gesture will affect vocal motion and support. He is interested here in developing what he calls a "conducting vocabulary," gestures we will use in our conducting to remind our singers in performance of vocal exercises used before.

Crescendos are created by lifting up-turned hands from the side of the body to the diaphragm (the "power center"). Movement beyond this does little to further the crescendo, but often causes the tone to spread. Lifting one hand from another located at the diaphragm will keep support under the tone. Up-turned hands show bright sounds; down-turned hands are dark. Moving from up-turned and out to down-turned and in will solve spreading. Having the choir model your gestures­even the conducting gesture­for them to reinforce and sensititze them to your intentions. Raising and lowering the conducting plane can be used to simulate many of these gestures, as can the infusion of these concepts within the pattern itself.

Use of description is not to be abandoned necessarily, especially if it is not just technical terminology. Being figurative and symbolic about what you want their sound to be like is more meaningful than simply telling them physically what to do.