Thomas J. West Music

When I began my first music teaching job in 1998, one of the first changes I made to the way the instrumental music program at my school ran was adding a third concert each school year. In addition to the winter concert in December and the spring concert in May, we held a Chamber Music concert in April. This concert was held at a local church rather than in our auditorium to achieve the correct ambiance for the smaller ensembles inherent to chamber music.

In the first year, once marching band season was concluded, I assigned every student in my band a piece of music to work on for this new concert. Some played duets out of the Voxman series, some played selections from the Canadian Brass books, and some played simple pop tunes with piano accompaniment from the myriad of publications available. I gave the students every Wednesday to split into their small ensembles and work on their music (we met five days a week).

Student As Learner, Teacher As Facilitator

One of the strongest things about giving my students this opportunity was affording them the chance to learn and rehearse the music themselves. I always made a disclaimer to the student and to their audience of parents at the Chamber Music concert that the resulting quality of performance was solely up to the students themselves. As the teacher, I rotated from group to group and provided feedback and coaching when appropritate. For lower achieving students, it gave me an opportunity to remediate that was rarely present during a concert band rehearsal. For my higher achieving students, it was an opportunity to spread their wings and work at their own level.

It also gave me an opportunity to work with my percussionists at a much more submersive level that concert band percussion parts typically allowed. By the time I left that program after six years as director, the percussion ensemble was playing Katchaturian's Sabre Dance and soloists were playing Yellow After the Rain and other popular solo pieces for marimba, multiple percussion, and so on.

Each chamber music concert concluded with me performing a movement of a concerto or sonata for clarinet with an adult pianist accompanying me. After one concert, a parent approached me and said, "I knew you were a good teacher, but I had no clue you could PLAY like that!" The benefits of my students seeing my perormance are pretty obvious. In most cases, I simply pulled a movement that I had previously played for a semester jury during my undergrad and dusted it off.

In year two of the chamber music program, I opened the music library up to the students and allowed them to choose their own repertoire. I was pleasantly surprised at their sense of depth and quality. Sure, we still endured the occasional "fluffy" pop tune, but for the most part, students made some great choices. The only requirement was that every student had to perform once, either as a soloist of part of an ensemble. For students with low aptitude, an easy pop tune with piano accompaniment allowed the pianist to adjust to insconsistencies in tempo, and the student still has the experience of being the primary performer without relying on the rest of their section. The higher achieving students undertook two or three pieces, often choosing to play a solo with piano accompaniment and putting together a chamber ensemble.In many cases, I played duets or quartets with the students. It became tradition for all of the graduating seniors to perform some kind of a solo piece as their "swan song".

Suggestions For Managing A Self-Directed Chamber Music Program

Most of my teaching experience has been with small programs of thirty to fifty students. Admittedly, the biggest obstacle to having a chamber music program such as this is having the facilities to run multiple small group rehearsals simultaneously while having them be fairly easy to monitor. The larger your instrumental music program, the more challenging this becomes. Rather than having a designated "chamber music day" during the week, creating a rehearsal calendar where one, two, or more chamber groups can rehearse in a practice room during the normal instrumental music period is another approach.

The younger the students are, the more structure and guidance they will need in order to use their time effectively. Middle school and underclassmen will need you to plan a rehearsal arc for them, teach them effective practice techniques, and challenge them to detect and correct musical errors. Because of this need to support the younger, less experienced performers, it is easy to allow your high-achievers to fend for themselves. These students will often need motivation to delve deeper into the music, however, in terms of expression and phrasing.

Another valuable lesson for the high-achievers is knowing when to recognize that they have "bit off more than they can chew". Make sure that you establish a deadline at least a week before the concert that all performers must demonstrate proficiency on the technical performance of their music. When that deadline comes, be ready with requirements that performs water down or omit troublesome passages.

Chamber Music As A Platform For Student Composition

Chamber music is a perfect vehicle to showcase student compositions. I always begin with students writing solo pieces for their primary instrument with primary chords in their easiest key as an accompaniment. From there they can move to writing solos in more challenging keys with a wider selection of sub-dominant chords. Moving up to two-part writing with duets, and finally to four-part writing for trios and quartets gets the students to experience the full range of what is possible with their primary instrument. Branching out into mixed instrumentation can also occur once two-part writing begins. A chamber music concert is the perfect venue for all of these student compositions. The most successful composers can be invited to write pieces for the full concert band, orchestra, or vocal ensemble as well.

Chamber Music Puts The "Alone" In The National Standards

The second national standard from MENC is "Performing on instruments, alone or with others, a varied repertoire of music." The traditional American public band and orchestra program does not effectively address the word "alone" in this standard. Chamber music is the most effective way to teach independence in performance and develop the audiation and technical abilities of every student.

This article (c) 2011 Thomas J. West. All content on ThomasJWestMusic dot com is licensed under a Creative Contributions Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Please contact the author before publishing on or off-line.

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