The system of orchestras within the Merida nucleo
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Orchestra – At this nucleo, teachers are responsible for making the instruments, they sing and imitate playing with the
students and also demonstrate how to care of the instruments. They again emphasised the approach of 'Play first than read'! As with Suzuki's philosophy of music learning, they compared the process to first knowing how to speak, then read and write language.
Pre-Infantil
– After six months of learning on an instrument, the children start in a beginners orchestra. Typically they spend 1 hour 30 mins each day rehearsing, and start a new
orchestra with more complex repertoire each year. There is the creation of new beginners orchestra every school year (we saw many orchestras who have been playing for six months as we visited halfway through the academic year).
Infantil
- In these rehearsals we were able to observe the role of sectional tutors in a full rehearsal: standing and pacing around the players of their section they mimic bowings, count aloud, help to
maintain tempo, remind the children of technical details, relay & explain instructions from
the conductor, tune & fix instruments, keep discipline and silence. The focus of all of this constant advice was the main principle of learning to
play together – speed, expression, rhythms, etc.
Juvenil - The youth orchestra rehearsal was an incredible experience. The force of the sound of was as overwhelming as the orchestras in the nucleos in Caracas that we had visited. I decided to borrow a violin to experience being a part of one of these youth orchestras (it had been ten years since I had played the violin in an orchestra). The choice of repertoire was not kind to me, the 4th movement of Shostakovich's 5th Symphony 4th movt and Silvestre Revueltas' piece Sensemaya with rhythms that are almost impossible to sightread. The conductor of the Infantil orchestra, Joel Perez, came to my aid and sat down next to me at the back of the second violins section. The support that I saw being given to the children at the previous rehearsal, was now being given to me. Especially in the Revueltas piece that I was not familiar with, Joel counted aloud, sang the rhythms of the percussion section that I would soon join in with, and helped me to negotiate some terrible photocopied scores with pages missing! I found myself watching the bowing of the players in front of me, trying to keep up rather than feeling confident enough to watch the conductor - I was out of my comfort zone musically again. I think I managed about half the notes required of me, but I gained a sense of what it must feel like for a lot of the students who are being constantly challenged in this learning environment.
I was interested in the progression of the students through the different levels of the orchestra. My own experience has involved a more rigid system - we think more of progress on the
scale of the individual e.g. this musician has reached a certain technical level and
is ready to audition for the next orchestra up. Instead, in many nucleos they follow the progress of the group of children and make the call as to whether the group is ready to tackle more advanced repertoire, thus keeping the community of students together as much as possible. They simply change the title of the orchestra from Children to Youth.
It seems
that the change in repertoire tackled is the most defining element of the
identity of the new orchestra, for example the children know that if they are starting to learn Tchaikovsky's 4th and Shostakovich's 10th symphonies that they are at the next level. There are auditions as well, for the players at the first stand for example. They evaluate the players every week and change the section leaders every six months. There were auditions for the chance to go to Salzburg and for orchestras in Caracas. Many students were preparing for auditions when we were there - an El Sistema favourite, the 4th movement of Tchaikovsky's 4th symphony was chosen as audition material, a piece of popular shared repertoire that everyone wants to participate in.
As I have mentioned before, the orchestral repertoire used is unified throughout the nucleos, so students have a clear idea of what level they are working at according to what pieces they are rehearsing. Also they have seen their peers and those before them model playing the same pieces and the community is familiar with them. How much of this approach is strategic or needs-based according to the resources available? Do students (and teachers) find the same repertoire being repeated each year and for each ensemble ultimately uninspiring? How much of the repertoire involves flexibility to community interests? Again it also seems that there is a problem in retaining students from the Pre-Infantil orchestra onwards, otherwise there would be an immense amount of students in the Juvenil orchestra if a new cohort is formed every year.
