Repertoire Under Instrumentation Constraints: Choosing the MPA Slow Piece
Ms. Okafor directs the seventh-grade band at a Title I middle school: 52 students, three 50-minute rehearsals per week, no pull-out lessons, and a shared stage she must vacate by 4:15. Her instrumentation is 18 clarinets, 9 flutes, 8 alto saxophones, 4 trumpets, 2 trombones, 1 euphonium, 2 tubas, and 3 percussionists. She has no oboe, bassoon, or horn. District MPA is six weeks away and requires a march, a lyrical selection, and a sight-reading evaluation; ratings are published in the local paper. She is deciding between two grade-2 slow pieces. Piece A is lush, built around a four-part horn soli, and includes a flute divisi that sits on high B for six measures. Piece B is a chorale setting built around a clarinet trio, with a horn part that already doubles the euphonium and only three percussion parts. One percussionist transferred in January and cannot yet read notation fluently.
1. Which piece should Ms. Okafor program, and why? Include what would still need to be rewritten or reassigned even after choosing the better fit.
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Choose Piece B. The reasoning is instrumentation-driven, not aesthetic.
Why Piece A fails: a four-part horn soli cannot be covered by a band with no horns. Euphonium and trombone can play the lines, but four-part horn writing sits in a range and timbre where the substitute sounds like a section playing the wrong piece; the exposed moment is precisely where MPA judges listen. The flute divisi on high B is worse: at grade 2 the ninth-grade flutes most likely to be in this section are least reliable above high G, and six sustained measures up there invites cracked attacks and flat pitch under pressure. A single exposed failure in a slow piece is disproportionately costly.
Why Piece B works: the horn part already doubles the euphonium, so the missing section is a color problem, not a hole. The clarinet trio feature plays to her deepest section. Three percussion parts match three players, including the transfer student.
What still needs fixing: 18 clarinets playing a trio feature will bury the melody in a homogeneous blob. She should designate three soloists and give the remaining fifteen a written counterline or a carefully cued sustained harmony, then rehearse the trio separately. She should also check the flute parts against her players' reliable range and take the divisi down an octave where needed, add trumpet and trombone on the chorale melody so the tune has front-of-ensemble presence, and write in a tuba cue wherever the euphonium is exposed. Finally, she should verify the MPA percussion requirements before locking parts.
2. Build a six-week rehearsal plan across 18 rehearsals that allocates time among the march, the slow piece, sight-reading, and fundamentals. Justify the distribution.
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Total: 18 rehearsals × 50 minutes = 15 hours.
Every rehearsal, all six weeks (10 minutes): fundamentals. Long tones with a tuner on a projected drone, lip slurs or clarinet register exercise, and a rhythm-reading drill on the day's hardest figure. This is not optional time; it is what makes the other 40 minutes efficient.
Every rehearsal (8 minutes): sight-reading. Distributed practice, not a unit. Read one short unfamiliar excerpt daily, no stopping, teacher scores accuracy and steadiness. Massed sight-reading in week 6 does not build the skill; daily cold reading does.
March (roughly 40% of remaining time). Front-loaded, because the march carries the most detail - articulation, tempo stability, transitions - and detail decays without repetition. Weeks 1–3: note-learning and articulation by section. Weeks 4–5: full run-throughs at tempo. Week 6: two clean run-throughs only.
Slow piece (roughly 35%). Back-loaded but started early enough: week 1–2 note-learning and the clarinet trio isolated; weeks 3–5 phrasing, balance, intonation; week 6 polish, no new fixes.
Weeks 5–6 include one recorded run-through per piece under performance conditions (no stopping, audience of one) so students hear what judges hear. Reserve the final rehearsal before MPA for transitions and confidence, not for correcting notes; new corrections 24 hours out produce hesitancy.
3. The January transfer percussionist cannot yet read notation fluently. How should Ms. Okafor handle his part for MPA without lowering the section's rating or embarrassing him?
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Principle: modify the part, not the student's status in the section. He should be a contributing member with a written part, not benched and not silently covered.
Step 1 - assign a part he can own. Choose the part with the simplest rhythmic vocabulary (often bass drum or suspended cymbal rather than snare) and verify against the MPA required-instrumentation list. If the piece's three parts are fixed, consider whether he plays the simplest line and a stronger reader doubles it on a different instrument, so the sound is covered without his part being exposed.
Step 2 - teach rote-to-notation. Have him learn the pattern by ear and by counting first, then show him how the pattern looks on the page. Write the rhythm large on an index card taped to his music stand. Count the figure aloud with the whole section so he hears the count in context, not in isolation.
Step 3 - build a visual anchor. Mark entries with a colored cue, and have him watch the conductor's prep rather than reading forward under pressure. Six weeks is enough for a limited part; it is not enough to close a two-year reading gap.
Step 4 - rehearse the section alone twice weekly for ten minutes. The rest of the band will not notice ten minutes; the percussion section will.
Avoid: giving him a part he cannot play and hoping the section covers it, which teaches him that his contribution does not matter; or excusing him from MPA, which removes the deadline that motivates the work. If the district offers a modified assessment pathway, document what he can do so growth is measured against his entry point.