A cappella group performing on stage
The A Cappella Blog

The arrangements groups use for competition

Measure for Measure

Each Friday A Cappella Blog contributors will take a look at both sides of a controversial, interesting, or seemingly random statement related to collegiate a cappella.

We welcome you to weigh in on the topic at hand by posting a comment. We also welcome readers to offer up their own statements for our writers to consider, Measure for Measure. 

This week, Melissa and Mike C. take on the true and false side, respectively, of the following statement: 

Groups competing in ICCA should only be allowed to perform material that a current member of the group arranged.

True: On one hand, I'm not sure you can make a hard and fast rule that each of the songs you bring to ICCA must be arranged by a current member of the group.  First, it's not enforceable.  All I'd have to do is write my name down as the arranger of each piece. Second, for those honest directors out there, I'm afraid that a rule like this could eliminate a lot of groups that are currently competing, and would likely eliminate the younger groups (those using borrowed arrangements, getting help from others, etc.) from competing as well.

As an arranger, however, I feel very strongly that a group's credibility is enhanced if someone on that stage created the work that is being performed.  Any director can take a Kirby Shaw arrangement, teach the notes, and then work with dynamics and choreography until it's competition-worthy.  Any director can take a song she sang in high school, transpose it, eliminate a note here and there, call it "arranged" and send it onstage.  But that's not the challenge of collegiate a cappella.  The challenge is one, two, three members sitting around a computer at all hours, trying to figure out whether that chord needs the root to be doubled…maybe the sopranos need to carry that over the bar line into the next phrase…will this rhythm help keep the tempo but also allow the basses to breathe?  The arranger that starts from scratch has to make all of these decisions, and I think that arrangements are infinitely more interesting when the arranger knows the intricacies of the voices she has to work with and tailors the arrangement to showcase the group's abilities. 

Is that to say that an alumna can't assist?  What about a friend from another group on campus?  I think groups have the responsibility to perform the best arrangements they have access to, but someone currently in the group should have a hand in that process.  I have found it infinitely more difficult to arrange for my old group now that I'm no longer running the rehearsals three times a week; I don't know the voices, I don't know the capabilities, I don't know the personalities of the girls and how it would translate to putting certain songs on stage.  Current members would know all of that.  While I don't think ICCA can require that all of the pieces performed by arranged by current members, requiring that at least one piece be arranged by a current member would be a huge step in getting more creativity out there…preventing groups from completely falling back on the repertoire that their former music director left for them and encouraging the creation of new material tailored to the current ensemble.

False: It sounds simple enough to say that groups should only get to use material a current group member arranged. The collegiate scene, however, does not lend itself to such black and white distinctions. Say a current member of the group co-arranged the song with another member of the group, who dropped out of the ensemble before competition. Would this piece qualify? Or say a current group member teamed up with a senior to arrange the song, and the group didn't get to bring the song to competition until the following year. Surely, these first two scenarios seem innocent enough, and still reflect the spirit of such a rule. But then, say the current group member is collaborating with an alumna who graduated two years ago. Or three, or four, or five. Suddenly, this may not be a collaboration between two friends who were a part of the group, but rather, one student and one person who could just as easily be a professional composer. Is this OK? Things are getting cloudy.

You can attach a rule that the arranger(s) had to be a part of the group at the time of arrangement. But then you can have a group performing a song someone arranged for them ten years ago. This may not be inherently wrong, but it means that the current group no longer devoted creative energy to arranging the piece. This absence seems to defeat the purpose of having such a rule in the first place. The ICCA could create by-law after by-law on this topic, and yet never cover every possibility—and even if they did, it would be pretty hard to stop a group from just claiming a different arranger, to skirt the rule altogether. Such a policy would, therefore, be utterly unenforceable.

Beyond the impractical nature of this rule, I, as a spectator, would not want to see this sort of rule in action. To me, ICCAs are, first and foremost, about what happens on stage. It's not a question of which group is the best—it's a question of which group performs the best on a given night, for those judges, and those spectators. If a group struggles to write its own material, but can perform the heck out of a song their alumni or even professionals put together for them, I say more power to them—let the better performance shine through, and let the crowd go home happy.

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