Iwan Edwards: Motivating Young Voices

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The great thing about singing is that it challenges so many aspects of a child’s psyche," said Iwan Edwards, conductor of the FACE Treble Choir. "It’s an intellectual exercise, a physical exercise because there is breathing and that is healthy, and it’s an emotional exercise. All of those things children need. It goes towards developing a complete child. To deprive them of that is therefore, in a sense, a crime."

Following a March 22 performance of the Lizst Dante Symphony, the same work that launched the choir, Edwards will be retiring after 20 years as the FACE Treble Choir’s director. "It’s time for the director of the choir to be teaching at the school," said Edwards, who will continue his activities as chorus master of the the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, artistic director of the St-Lawrence Choir and professor of music at McGill University. La Scena Musicale spoke to Iwan Edwards about his work with youth choirs.

"When Phillip Baugniet, founder of the FACE school, invited me to join FACE in 1979, it only went up to grade 7. Only 12 students were interested in singing. The next year we made choral music compulsory. I had done some work with maestro Dutoit and he found out that I had worked with choirs. In January 1981, the Montreal Symphony programmed the Lizst Danté Symphony and he asked me to form a treble choir of 50–60 singers." Since that time, the FACE Treble Choir, consisting of mostly girls from grades 7 to 11, has become the youth choir of choice for the MSO in concerts and recordings.

"I’ve always had gifted and not so gifted children. Although the choir is auditioned, there are very few I turn away. If a child wants to sing, I try to make it possible. I look for a good voice with true intonation; it doesn’t have to be a soloist voice. It’s surprising how illuminating children’s faces can be at an audition. They are petrified. I listen and I watch them and try to gauge if there is any kind of a spark that I can appeal to. If there is a love for what they do, it shows every time.

"We work on good posture, breathing, support, good formant vowel sounds and to develop a keen awareness of the intonation. It’s like a sculpture, you chip at it slowly until you get what you are looking for.

"I encourage them to sing intelligently. I never talk about blend and I never go for a white sound. They develop a sense of what their sound is."

Edwards divides the choir from left to right in sections: soprano I, soprano II and alto. "The grade 11 girls are taller and are in the 4th row. It works downwards — so the grade 7s are in the first row. As the more mature sound comes forward it picks up the other colours from the younger voices from the front, and out of that comes the melange which is the sound you are looking for. This helps the grade 7s learn the music and develop the choir’s unique sound.

"Sometimes, the student in grade 11 is short but has a strong voice, but you would never put her in the front row. She would be in the 2nd or 3rd row, alongside two younger singers with strong voices to absorb her sound, so that the blend comes horizontally and vertically."

One of the hallmarks of the Treble Choir is its ability to sing from memory. "Children’s minds are absorbent and pick up things very quickly. They have remarkable powers of retention which adults tend to underestimate. Memorizing is an expectation built over 20 years. The trick is to absorb the music as they learn it. The older ones read very well and the younger ones have to learn to keep up.

"I try to keep them motivated, and the motivation lies within the repertoire. The more extreme the notation, the "cooler" it is. Give them a piece of allegory music, and unlike adults, they will ask how to do it. You build into the natural inquiry.

"There are two kinds of music that really appeal to them. The Murray Schafer type of music encourages their imagination. They love singing counterpoint; the settings of renaissance masses give them a measure of independence which is satisfying and challenging. They are bored with pop songs; a choir can never reproduce an individual, therefore the use of pop songs with choirs is a dangerous tool.

"One thing to avoid is giving them the impression that there is a problem. Then their new-found confidence will disappear very quickly. I try to encourage them to focus enormous energy into singing, to be specific with the text, painting pictures for them which will help them get the music off the page. When they latch onto an idea or concept, it is amazing what happens to their energy level at that point, it just takes off. They know they are being genuinely creative, and children like that.

"I enjoy working with children because they have fresh minds you can play with, and you can reach into their souls very quickly. Children will show their emotion much quicker than adults. It is a privilege to be in that position, and one has to be careful not to abuse it. The emotion has to be genuine all the time, not cheap or superficial."

More of this interview appears at <www.scena.org>.