Abstract

In this reflection on a cultural exchange between Scandinavian and Hong Kong choir cultures, I will reflect through Artographic glasses. It’s one of many attempts answering the fundamental question – how to constantly improve my own practice theory – as an educator, artist and researcher.

Artography as a research method, is teaching based research, which fits exceptionally well for an educator on teacher's education programs. The method is about conducting research through my own teaching practice, and a way of teaching through an explorative approach, and it also implies a practical and research-oriented approach to my own teaching practice. An underlying intention is to help structuring my own art as performer, teacher and researcher.

Combined with the ideas that a reflection should have as a goal to create awareness, clarification and new understanding, this constitutes a purposeful format for sharing my experiences and reflections.

Reflection

My work/study stay in Hong Kong under the auspices of the Hong Kong Inter-school Choral Festival lasted between 16. February and 3. March, 2024. The festival caters to all schools in Hong Kong and their school choirs - a total of about 20,000 children and young people are involved.

My tasks included:

• Adjudicator and coach in choir competitions (5 competition)
• Workshop for music teachers/choir conductors together with Defrost  Youth Choir
• Workshop 2 hours with rehearsal of three songs for 600 school children  secondary school
• Choir clinics - visits to schools, coaching choir/conductor 2 hours (3 visits)
• “Meet the jury” (online zoom) - meeting with conductors who wanted a 15 min follow-up with me after the competition (6 sessions)
• Conductor of one of the 4 Artist in Residence choirs, 2 x 2 hours rehearsal for the Festival closing concert
• Televised concert with Defrost Youth Choir and 2 local choirs (Defrost was the only invited international choir - Guest choir of the year)
• School visits with Defrost :

- The Education University of Hong Kong (2 hours)
- Tseung Kwan O Methodist Primary School (2 hours)
- Hong Kong Baptist University (2 hours)
- Precious Blood Secondary School (2.5 hours)
- Heep Yunn School (secondary, 3 hours)
- Buddhist Lam Bing Yim Memorial School (1.5 hours)
- TWGHs Ma Kam Chan Memorial School (3 hours)

• Observing 3 of my colleagues' workshops (3 x 2 hours)

Cultural Differences and Communication

Communicating professionally with children and young people in Hong Kong is very easy. They receive good and thorough music training in school, albeit many are not strong sight readers. Many cannot read music but they are trained in Solfège. This is reminiscent of the old days in Norway, where music reading and music theory/ear training were integral elements of the teaching. School choirs were also much more common than what we experience today.

In principle, there is no such thing as a voluntary music life in Hong Kong as we know it in Scandinavia. Or extracurricular activities... Simply because there is not the same free time for either parents or children that is common in our Scandinavian countries. Many  children are rushed off to cram school as soon as school has finished, in order to brush up subjects. Where then, do children and young people encounter music? In schools and churches. It is interesting to note that the music teachers I spoke to, sing the same lament we do in Norway (albeit somewhat more pentatonic..) about there being far too little time for music in school. And because everything is relative and everything is viewed from a separate inside perspective, it is imperative to get out from your own bubble to see how things are done and perceived in other countries.

In many schools, choral singing is an elective subject. They then usually have to choose between band or choir. If they are uninterested in bands, they end up on the other "scrap heap alternative" - choirs. This makes it extra challenging for music teachers to motivate students to work, due to lack of enthusiasm/motivation.

«As a choir leader/teacher, I believe several areas can be improved to establish a positive relationship with the students, engage them in class, and foster a love for singing. My goal is to make choir lessons enjoyable and inspire students' passion for participating in choir.

I would greatly appreciate it if you could suggest some strategies for managing these challenging situations within the choir”  (Melody Chiang, music teacher in middle school).

This was a response I got after sending out a personal email to many music teachers about 2 months before my lecture for them together with Defrost. This was actually the only response I got – which leads me to reflect on the more social form of communication.
 

It is not unknown that our Norwegian flat and democratic structure, where every single vote is important and counts, is not particularly dominant in Hong Kong. Here it's about not sticking out, not being special, becoming one of the others, having the same uniform and hairstyle, sounding like the others, clinging together into an anonymous and personality-poor unit. This permeates society to such an extent, even when you put music teachers together in a lecture, they are reluctant to say something that can be perceived as personal. Even though this is challenging for a visiting professor - I merely have to respect this - and let myself be stimulated by it!

How could I then with my pedagogy "trick" them into answering, in the same way I would try to "trick" quiet children or adults in Norway into answering? And there, right there, man appears before nationality and culture. It works just as well in Hong Kong as it does in Norway. They “surrendered” to pedagogy, which in turn opened up an interesting conversation with them about this social communication. They know it very well themselves, but it is not easy to break with years being defined by their own culture. It makes me reflect that maybe The Law of Jante was originally Asian...?

The inner communication

The inner communication within the choirs needs to be addressed - both the auditory and the visual. When it comes to the auditory, it is about the extent to which the line-up in the choir makes it possible for the singers to hear both themselves and their fellow singers. For this to be possible, singers do not have to stand too close, which both stifles the internal acoustics of the choir and makes it difficult to hear the other singers. When this happens, a function automatically pops in where you mute yourself to hear the others. This occurs at the same time for all the other singers, and the result is a choir that withdraws. By increasing the distance between singers - to the distance we during the pandemic called "social distance" - the sound will be more easily transported within the choir and everyone will automatically give more of themselves. This social psychological phenomenon can be linked to the Ringelmann effect, being “the tendency for individual members of a group to become increasingly less productive as the size of their group increases” (Wikipedia)

Or as Sharon Paul puts it:
"To put it another way, studies show that when a group member feels anonymous, they are more likely to have reduced productivity on their task, but if their contribution is identifiable, they will be more strongly motivated to put forth a better effort. This finding is particularly crucial for conductors to remember when dealing with large ensembles, where it is easy for singers to undervalue their personal contributions to the group. " (Sharon Paul, Art and Science in the Choir Rehearsal", 2020, p. 65)

With greater distance between the singers, the motivation to take responsibility increases, leading to increased general effort as well as volume. For the audience, the choir will appear more convincing in addition to the choir visually appearing as a collective of individuals with independence and security, which in turn positively affects the expectations to the the choir’s overall performance.

Alone in the collective

As in so many choirs around the world - and of course also in Norway - it would seem that the singers relate to the conductor on an individual level. Rhythmic and musical information must be obtained from the conductor on an individual level, all separately. This is based on a very traditional autocratic management model, which gives security to the individual singer. What interests me is the extent to which a singer can extract information from the choir itself, through the internal network, by connecting to it primarily through their own active listening. The vast majority of choral music is composed on the principle that each individual voice has its own life in symbiosis with the other voices. However, since the singers often use their sight more than the auditory to acquire information about music and rhythm, this makes the more lateral communication between the singers difficult. I believe this can be remedied by singers being given the opportunity - and courage - to make more contact with each other visually by making eye contact while singing. In addition to the fact that this - for the audience - reinforces the experience that the singers are together in this, it connects sight and hearing more actively. When I tried to get the young singers to do this, they were initially very embarrassed. Not an unexpected reaction in itself, but stronger than the one I have experienced in Norway. Still, it didn't take long for the singers in the choir I worked with the most - Heep Yunn - to find each other in this form of communication and enjoy it. However, I had to remind them of it many times - they quickly fell into the old form of communication, with their eyes fixed only on the conductor.

From one of my rehersals with Heep Yunn Secondary School choir, rehearsing "Kom" by Monica Åslund. Focus on freeing the girls, breaking out of normal choir formation, including dance. 

My lecture on the learning choir - together with Defrost

About 50 music teachers/conductors had signed up to take part in my lecture about the learning choir. About building the ensemble from the inside out, based on how you know the individual singer, prerequisites, limitations and needs. Only from that knowledge can you give them the tools they need to build themselves out of their comfort zone and into the stretch zone. And through this, build the musical community founded on your own individual responsibility to let your voice be heard, become important.

During the lecture, I experience from the music teachers/conductors the same caution, fear/refusal to ask/interact. Only two of the participants spoke, while the young singers in Defrost almost competed to get the microphone to express themselves! This was also particularly noted by many of the participants - that these young singers from Norway dared to express themselves so freely in such a setting. For me to be allowed to have my own choir there, where it is the singers themselves who answer the few questions that came from the participants - it was truly fantastic.

Self-confidence, self-awareness, and independence

Not surprisingly - and as mentioned earlier - Asian culture in a more vertical structure plays a role in how young singers relate to themselves and to the collective. My work in this project was therefore about how I could "Defrost" the singers to become more independent and liberated. I toured these concepts diligently in my workshops, not least through dialogue-based teaching. As mentioned before, this in itself is quite difficult to achieve - something that all of my colleagues also expressed. You ask questions and try to open them as much as possible - with very limited reaction back.

but - once they opened up - there was no sign of inhibition or shyness:

Function

A choir can have many ideologies about function. For some choir leaders, the choir is about how individual individuals are to be emulated into a body, a sound, a sound where everything is homogenized in units, top-down from the leader's fundamental ideology. Singers themselves may also have a more or less conscious basic view of why they want to be in the choir. Some wish to disappear in the crowd - anonymized - while others will look for a collective to shine. This is how it has always been and will continue to be, and is not at all unique to the choir function. I dare say, in all my meetings with choirs in Hong Kong through this project, I experienced almost exclusively the singers' need to anonymize themselves - which was also evident in the sound of the choir, which tends to become more objective and thus does not reflect the sum of all unique individuals.

By using different methods to free the singers from each other - not least through the use of line-up and distance from each other - they were given the opportunity to experience what it is like to stand on their own two feet in the collective. In this way, they gained greater insight about themselves and their own knowledge in the collective. That it's not about us or us, but me and I. That it is my responsibility alone as a singer to manage knowledge that is either given by the choir director or that has been negotiated in dialogue between choir and leader. My work with this - to individualize the responsibility - was very well received by all the choirs I worked with, and it is my clear opinion that this ideology is what they wish to pursue.

The use of piano in the choir and its consequences

It is a well-known fact that in the Asian choral tradition, the piano is very important. Most of music composed/arranged for choirs in Asia is based on piano support. Therefore, there is also a great focus on developing pianists and the piano skills of music teachers and conductors. Asia is not alone in this culture - you can also find it in e.g. the United States and England. In my opinion, one cannot connect Hong Kong's part of the British Empire to this culture, even if it is tempting. As mentioned, the culture can be found in many parts of Asia.

What consequences does this frequent use of the piano have? Well, for sure, the piano tuners are experiencing good times, but besides that, it is most interesting to look at the consequences of the development of e.g. auditory abilities in the choir. One concrete example of this is, the differences in the treatment of major thirds. The piano is tempered - i.e. adjusted to even out irregularities that are naturally found in natural tone tuning
 "Temperate tuning is to tune instruments with a fixed pitch such as the piano and organ, so that the octave becomes pure and all other intervals have a varying degree of out of tuning" (from The Great Norwegian Encyclopedia)

A concrete example

A major third is not always just a major third. How to intonate a major third is very much context/culture-related. If you want harmonic intonation, it is intonated low (according to pure tuning) but is normally intonated higher according to a temperate or melodic intonation. The distance between the fundamental tone and the major third is 400 cents in temperate tuning, and somewhat less - 386 cents in the harmonic series - i.e. a discrepancy of 14 cents[1].  If Asian choirs sing a cappella, the consequence in my experience will be that intonation tends to go up. This can be explained by the fact that, through extensive use of piano accompaniment, they have become accustomed to intoning major thirds too loud - i.e. with a distance of 400 cents to the fundamental note.

The piano as a support or substitute in the choir work

A conductor I visited at one of my workshops expressed that the young singers became very insecure if you didn't support with piano. They have obviously become so conditioned to this “crutch” function, that without it a form of musical-social anxiety arises. Since another of my fads is about building the choir from the inside out, based on the idea that the singer should use the choir to build up their own self-image, self-confidence and independence - it is timely to question the socio-psychological function of the piano in the choir. Can excessive use of the piano have an hindering effect on the individual singer having to learn to intonate independently, in relation to the other singers rather than in relation to the piano? I can clearly see tendencies towards this in the choirs I have been able to experience up close throughout this project, in both competitions and workshops.

Choir competitions and framework factors

A choir that is going on stage is controlled a lot by external factors, the acoustics, physical space on the stage and not least where the choir benches are placed These factors - and especially the choir benches - often force the choir to stand in a way that you may not like or have prepared. This is a classic problem, and I clearly felt the frustration of one conductor in particular who did not believe he could take the liberty of freeing himself from the choir benches. We get a situation where the outer framework defines/dictates the inner artistic expression. In a way, the design of the stage becomes an authority that decides, and in a culture like the one I experienced in Hong Kong, where it is a culture to conform to an authority, it becomes almost impossible for artists/artists/teachers to clinch with what has been decided in advance - you take what you get. It was also not possible for the choirs to rehearse the stage before the competitions, which is an insult to both the art form and the artists. There is a lot of authority to be traced in all teams. Not so strange in and of itself, but it still stands in contrast to how we in Norway relate to each other. I also notice this clearly in the way what I convey is perceived. Everything is taken for granted, very little reflection on whether this is relevant to their own theory of practice.

Ideology

Choir competitions seem to be impacting the general function of a vast majority of school choirs in Hong Kong. This is clearly a connected to meritocracy – merits matter. It’s important for schools to have a successful choir – or choirs – having won competitions. The possibility to succeed in school choir competitions have been offered for more than 70 years. Clearly this has coloured the underlying function of the school choir and their teachers. It’s the goal that dominates the work, not the process. For me personally this was a clash with my own ideologies for a choir – where it’s the singer’s individual growth on a personal, social and musical level that should be in focus.

The choir competitions, where I was active as a judge in 5 of them, were built around the organizer's ideology that they had to be edifying, formatting and not summative. All choirs got to listen to each other and after the choir had delivered their songs, one of the adjudicators had the opportunity to give some positive assessments. Meanwhile, the other went up to the choir and got 8 minutes to guide the choir. Not all my colleagues shared the view that the assessment should be formative, which is why the assessment from the two judges could naturally differ somewhat in some cases.
One of my fads when it comes to creating the best possible conditions for individual performance in the choir paired with good listening, is about the placement of the choir on stage. Therefore, a good part of my assessments were also about what they could do to improve the situation for the individual singer and thus also for the entire choir. By moving singers and choirs around, they got the opportunity to try this out there and then, which also benefited the passive choirs in the audience. These attempts were usually met with appreciative and spontaneous applause from the observing choirs. What lasting effect has this had? Will it turn out in the future that the conductors and choirs have discovered something that can really help them, in both rehearsal and concert contexts? The fact is, that this became evident already a few days later in another choir competition, to which I was invited as a regular audience. All of the participating choirs now used a scattered line-up, where only a part of the choir benches were used. Otherwise, they now used the floor and a good distance from each other, and in some cases even mixed arrangements of the singers. This continued throughout my stay, and feedback from many participating choir conductors and music teachers was unequivocally positive about these positive and lasting changes.

Missionary work or development work?

Throughout all the years I have worked in meetings with other cultures, I have always been concerned that it must not be about missionary work, that my/our didactics, pedagogy, methodology and democratic way of looking at the development of the community is the only correct faith. I see clearly - and constantly learn from it - that Asian culture based on models other than our domestic ones, is something I can often miss in my own daily meeting with students, young people and adults. For me, it is important to present alternative methods that, in combination with their own methods, can be varied and enriching. Such encounters with other cultures challenge my own theory of practice, what seems to work globally regardless of culture and what is more culturally determined. I find that my pedagogical perspectives change and undoubtedly lead to an enrichment of my own work as an educator and performer. The formative aspect of this is about how I can translate my own development work to my own students at Inland Norway University. The future will tell!

Summary:

The desire of the festival management was to bring my theory of practice to Hong Kong and this festival, after the festival director had participated in a workshop I gave for choral conductors in Malaysia, 2022. The wish included bringing my own choir Defrost Youth Choir to bring to life my underlying philosophies of choral singing. In retrospect of my 16 days in the encounter with choral culture in Hong Kong, and not least in view of this change in the choirs' stage behavior, I feel able to say that my guidance/coaching has really had an effect, at least in the short term - hopefully also in the long term. The comment from the headmaster of Heep Yunn school that I worked with - "Professor Caplin thank you - you have liberated my girls!" strengthens this impression.

In October 2024 I will return to Hong Kong to initiate a mentoring program in collaboration with HKICF and WCCN (World Choral Conducting Network).

From direct Televised concert - Defrost Youth Choir Performing "Ukrainian Alleluia" by Craig Courtney, demonstrating that all singers in a choir are leaders. 

All photos and video are by courtesy of Hong Kong Inter-School Choral Festival. 

Sources:

Art & Science in the Choral Rehearsal. Sharon J. Paul, Oxford University Press (2020).
© Oxford University Press.

Store norske leksikon, about the Ringelmann effect -  https://snl.no/sosial_loffing

Defrost live concert in Hong Kong:

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ympMEgMWZgk&ab_channel=RTHK%E9%A6%99%E6%B8%AF%E9%9B%BB%E5%8F%B0)

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cent_(music)