Maryville College student conductors step to other side of the podium for April 17 Rehearsal Choir concert
April 10, 2024
From choir performances to recitals to small ensemble concerts to collaborative productions like “Messiah,” Maryville College music students are most at home in front of an audience.
Three of them, however, will turn their backs on auditorium attendees when they step up to the podium to direct their peers at an April 17 rehearsal choir performance. Brianna Marcopulos ’24, Jackie Manning ’26 and Dana Patterson ’26 will wrap up their coursework in the Division of Fine Arts’ Advanced Conducting class by conducting various sections of Gabriel Fauré’s “Requiem,” and the public is invited to attend.
“This is the third year that the conducting class has hosted and prepared its own concert as part of the Advanced Choral Conducting course requirements,” said Stacey Wilner, director of choral activities at Maryville College. “The students are responsible for selecting appropriate vocal warm-ups, for teaching the music to the Recital Choir, and also for making all the arrangements and preparations for stage management, concert promotion, program information, etc.
“They will each be conducting a movement from the Faure ‘Requiem,’ although two are condensed versions. They will also be conducting a selection with the full (Maryville College) Concert Choir. This experience serves as a ‘model’ of the conducting experience. The students take on all the responsibilities involved in being a conductor — which include management and organizational aspects as well as conducting and solving musical problems.”
It’s a hands-on experience that’s part of the MC approach of encouraging students to “study everything to prepare for anything,” and for the three featured student conductors, it’s been an illuminating one as well.
“Ever since middle school, I have been a part of a vocal ensemble,” said Patterson, a Music Education with Licensure major from Greenback, Tennessee. “I actually never thought about the work that goes into being a conductor. After this class, I realize that a conductor not only conducts an ensemble but teaches the music and prepares everything that goes into a concert. I have gained a new respect for each director that I have had. They put in so much time and effort in order for their students to experience making music.”
Patterson will be conducting the “Kyrie Eleison” piece from “Requiem,” and working with a selection that doesn’t require a large number of lower voices will allow her to make the most of the altos and sopranos that will bring it to life. Manning, a Music major from Chattanooga, will conduct the “Sanctus” selection from “Requiem,” as well as “Pilgrim’s Hymn” from Steven Paulus’ “The Three Hermits.” Both, she said, fit ideally with this year’s Spring Choir Tour theme, “Songs of Hope.”
“With that theme, we chose pieces and anthems that reflect the dual-sided nature of hope, both grim and glorious,” she said. “Usually, the larger scale ‘Requiem’ masses that composers have written in the past musically represent a battle with death and the desperation for spending eternity in God. The unique thing about Fauré’s ‘Requiem’ is that rather than battling death, it seems to make peace with death and even plays with musical motifs of the decomposition of the human body.”
Deconstructing such themes and pairing them with the assembled octaves and singers is just one of the intricacies of the Advanced Choral Conducting class. Like her peers, Marcopulos — a Music major from Oak Ridge, Tennessee — never gave a lot of consideration to those smaller details before taking the course.
“I thought conducting was easy,” said Marcopulos, who will conduct the “Pie Jesu” section of “Requiem,” as well as the traditional “Benediction” by Peter Christian Lutkin. “I had a good sense of rhythm and could count music, so I wondered why people said it was hard. What is hard is being expressive! Anyone can beat a four pattern, but can their left arm show a crescendo at the same time their right arm is still conducting? Not so easy. Conducting class has taught me that good music is made when you show that energy and emotion in your conducting.”
And understanding those nuances, the trio said, will benefit them as both performers and as future MC graduates — coming up fast for Marcopulos, who graduates in May — who hope to turn their passion for music into careers. It’s another example, Patterson pointed out, of the value of a liberal arts education that encourages students to pursue so much more than just a specific degree field.
“Before taking the conducting class, I had no idea what being a conductor was like,” she said. “It was almost like a foreign language to me. I did think that the director just kept us on time and on beat, but now I know there is so much more to it. To me, it’s like being a painter or a dancer. My hands and arms are the paint brush, and the sound creates a beautiful painting. It is the director’s job to show and bring out the emotion that music can create. The whole ensemble is working together to make music, and the director is simply there to help lead them along. We make beautiful music together.”
The Advanced Choral Conducting class performance will take place at 12:15 p.m. on Wednesday, April 17, in the Harold and Jean Lambert Recital Hall of the Clayton Center for the Arts on the MC campus. Admission is free, and the concert is open to the public.
