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Many children and
youth choirs took part in the second day of the
The choir’s
repertoire includes many Israeli works, several of them written expressly for
Li-Ron. In the course of our conversation,
Shapira regards participation in competitions as highly important: Shapira: Work towards the competition, as well as taking part in the competition itself, has been an enriching experience both for me and for the choir: we get to see and hear choirs from different traditions, experience unfamiliar worlds, and expose ourselves to folklore from all over the world. Beyond this, I consider myself and the choirs as standard bearers for Israeli repertoire for children’s and youth choirs, the repertoire that forms the backbone of our programs in these competitions. I have not heard direct references, either from the judges or from audience members, to the beauty of the works we perform. However, when we receive applause, I regard this as proof that the works have transcended the language barrier: listeners were enthusiastic about the music despite being barred from unmediated comprehension of the text. During the
Shapira’s approach is explicitly influenced by her long experience in musical education. Li-Ron was created as the Gordon School Choir in Herzliya; today it is the city’s representative choir, administered by a public trust. In fact, Li-Ron consists of two distinct ensembles: a youth choir, consisting of children and youths between the ages of 12 and 20; and a younger choir consisting of children between the ages of 6 and 11, whose members later graduate into the youth choir. Shapira stresses the distinctions between the needs and abilities of a school choir – which normally does not have more than 50 rehearsal hours a week – and those of a choir like Li-Ron, which can afford a more intensive rehearsal schedule. No less important is the distinction between a children’s choir (like Li-Ron’s younger choir) and a youth choir. She argues that composers are not always sufficiently aware of these distinctions, which is why the Workshops Project proved only partially successful: Shapira: Youth Choirs that maintain a concentrated, intensive rehearsal schedule can grapple with difficult, complex works. But the Israeli repertoire for school choirs or children’s choirs is still too small; in this sense, the Workshops missed their target. School choirs require, primarily, one-part repertoire. I rarely perform even two-voice material with my children’s choir, other than canons – and even these present a considerable challenge. We also need songs whose content the children can relate to, through movement and acting, and we do not have enough of that, either. This year I found
suitable material for my younger choir in a work that wasn’t even conceived for
a choir: songs for solo voice and piano by
Shoham: It is not easy for a composer to write in such a sparse texture – just one vocal part. It’s similar to a challenge faced by sketch artists, seeking to express all their ideas in a single, thin and subtle line, and through it seeking to invoke all they want to say, just as if they had a full palette at their disposal. It’s a big challenge, and one I continue to grapple with. In this process, there is something inspirational about working with Li-Ron. They are like actors who express themselves vocally. They do not stand in line like a church choir. Even when they are not in motion, you can sense their attentiveness and flexibility through their stance, which is anything but rigid. Li-Ron’s children look like a group that creates drama through song. Acting and movement are indeed central facets of Shapira’s work with Li-Ron, as is the extra-musical content of the works they perform. During the rehearsals, she combines the different layers – music, text and acting: Shapira: My primary aim is to
achieve the movement within the sound, which should be felt through
the children’s body language as well as through their actual singing. They
need not necessarily move their entire body; through their connection with
the text and the music, through their understanding, they turn the sound
into the focal point of a whole that contains movement, acting, dance,
theatre, painting – all the arts find their expression through the vocal
production. This is easier to achieve when working with composers who
write to children out of an empathetic understanding of their world.
Shoham: And this was largely thanks to the children, who identified with Nurit Zarchi’s lyrics and wanted to grapple with them. In general, I avoid grandiose, historical, larger-than-life materials that seem fit for opera; I am interested in the little dramas of life, in interpersonal interaction; I try to create snapshots of everyday situations and decode them by translating them into sounds. When the children identify with the work, they relate to something that is already within them. When I wrote Little Miss Fork, I wrote the staging instructions for the drama into the music; I even ‘composed’ bodily gestures and facial expressions. The staging was not ‘tacked on’ after the compositional process ended; it was an integral part of the compositional process, and is as much a part of the work as the notes themselves. Shapira describes
her work with
Shapira: You can hear effects from real-life environment in Hajdu’s Four Songs Without Words (1993; IMI 6961), whose vocal imitation relates us to something that exists here and now, not just to something abstract and closed. This requires from the choir a variety of vocal timbres and effects, which make the process of music-making richer and more diverse. Hajdu sat with us when we rehearsed this work, and introduced changes into the score; he virtually recreated the piece while working on it with us. In my view, such openness is beneficial for the composer as well: it opens him up to more attentive listening than sitting down at the piano to compose. Besides the
importance they ascribe to the connection between text and music on the one
hand and the children’s inner world on the other, Shapira and Shoham also
emphasise music-making’s potential to enrich the children’s spiritual world.
This was felt, for instance, in Shapira’s work on a single-voice Hassidic niggun
by Rabbi Shneor Salman, that
Shapira: It is much harder to
communicate to the children an experience they never had before, in such a
way that it would illuminate their singing and the music. This requires
enormous concentration and inner listening, and intensive work on what
happens between the notes. This process takes place in a sphere which is
beyond words. I cannot explain how I did it, but the choir did the
niggun devoutly, and I am very proud of this. They arrived at the
niggun without any prior experience to guide them, but they
internalised the notion of religious devotion during the working process;
I think I helped them connect with their inner world and enrich it. I am
also glad to have had the chance to connect the children with something
drawn from our roots. It is important for me to include works that reflect
our religious heritage in the choir’s repertoire. This is felt, for
instance, in the works that
Shapira also
incorporates the singing of Yemenite women during the Henna ceremony into
Li-Ron’s repertoire, with choreography by Leah Avraham. This folklore brings a
different, complementary aspect into the choir’s exploration of Jewish musical
heritage, and contributes to the combination of singing and music essential for
the choir’s work. Their engagement with this heritage is also felt in the
choir’s work on
Shoham: It was very difficult to work on the Eastern ornamental nuances of these songs. This music is vocally challenging; the ornaments often have a Baroque character, requiring vocal flexibility and physical engagement. These are tiny, subtle ornaments that were virtually lost in the popular songs ostensibly inspired by them. Eastern ornamentation is an integral aspect of the style, and it was important for me to retain it in my art-music arrangement. In this sense, too, I was inspired and encouraged by my work with Ronit. With her, each little trill receives the attention it deserves; she works on it to ensure that it is executed properly, not flinching from the difficulties involved. Ronit treats these songs with the same dedication that she devotes to the best classical music. Shapira herself also emphasises the importance of serious work. On the one hand, the choir’s entry requirements seem light: Shapira does not demand previous musical background, only an ability to sing in tune. But in her actual works she makes no allowances; her technical, musical and spiritual demands are uncompromising. Shoham: Life today is practical, devoted to quick achievements; there is a tendency to surf between emotions in the same way that one surfs between channels on television. Work with the choir touches upon entirely different levels, of inner spiritual and mental observation, which we cannot afford in everyday life; in the bubble of the rehearsal room there is a prayer-like atmosphere, an experience that one consecrates oneself for. This atmosphere is always required – whether the choir is working on a religious work or on ostensibly comic, light-headed pieces (such as Moshe Rasiuk’s setting of Ephraim Sidon’s How the Shower-Head was Invented). This accounts for much of the choir’s international success – and for the enthusiasm of Israeli composers who enriched the choir’s repertoire and continue to work with them. |
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