Regardless of the type of choir for which you are selecting literature, there are multiple variables you’ll want to consider. But choosing the best pieces for the small school chorus sometimes presents unique challenges. I like to go about this using a funnel method.
Start with a large list of what you would like to do, and then weed out the pieces that might prove difficult when taking into account the unique situations you might encounter when teaching chorus in a small school or rural environment.
As you start eliminating for this criteria, your funnel will get smaller and smaller. By the time you reach the bottom, you will be left with the best possible choices for you and your students.
I like to begin by making a list of pieces that I simply think the students and I would both enjoy working on together. Good places to start are recalling pieces that have worked well for your situation in the past, visiting with other small school colleagues about what has worked well for them, and browsing “editor’s choice” or “festival favorites” sections of your favorite music publisher’s website.
(Of course if you are selecting for show choir or jazz ensembles, you would also browse the pop and jazz sections of those websites.) If you are anything like me, this initial list will probably be long!
After making that initial list, I start eliminating based on criteria such as voicing and difficulty level. Questions I ask myself are: Do I have enough really strong ears to carry this second soprano part? Are the students in a particular section mature enough to hone in on this particularly difficult area? Is this a piece that will really hold their interest, and will they talk about it in a positive light to their friends and family? (Because in a small school, recruitment and retention are everything!)
Whether or not you have access to an accompanist can have a huge impact on whether or not to eliminate something from your list. If a piece is accompanied, but goes beyond my skills to play and teach at the same time, and does not have an accompaniment recording available, it’s out.
There are also other, non-musical things to consider in a small or rural teaching situation that you might not have thought of. For example, I teach in a school that is very into basketball, and both the boy’s and girl’s teams are usually in the running to go to state, as is our speech team.
This means that the months of February and March get extremely dicey in terms of whether the students involved in these activities will be in school on a regular basis. Small school kids do it all, so the majority of students in my ensemble are involved in these activities.
Therefore, I need to take those factors into account when choosing literature for 2nd semester. If I don’t think certain pieces are something we can accomplish on a bare bones rehearsal schedule, it's out. I also usually program one piece for the winter concert that can also be used for District Music Contest, so we already have “one in the can”, so to speak.
As we get to the bottom of the funnel, start looking at which pieces might feature your best soloists, or could also be used as some sort of fundraising opportunity (singing valentines, caroling etc.)? Might this piece be something you could perform for your elementary students to start planting the seeds of future participation?
As we reach the bottom of the funnel, we’ve now created a list of possible pieces that check all of the boxes for success, and it’s time to make the final decisions. Most of the time, when I’ve reached this point, I let my students take over!
After all, I’ve already decided that the remaining options would work well for us, so why not let the students have some say in the process? You will be giving them a feeling of ownership, even if in reality you’ve already made most of the important decisions!
Using a funnel system for literature selection for your small school chorus can give some structure to a process that can sometimes leave you feeling like you don’t know where to start. Start big, end small, and make sure you ask yourself all the relevant questions along the way!
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