Earlier this month, Aaron Peisner ’12 conducted a concert consisting of a choir of men and women singing four centuries of choral music as part of his Senior Thesis. In addition to the classical pieces covering long spans of time and a diverse range of languages, the choir also performed an original piece by Peisner. Led by Peisner’s captivating and graceful conducting style, the chorus performed to a packed house at the Memorial Chapel, a fitting place for transcending the ages through choral music.

The Argus: How did you choose the songs for your show?
Aaron Peisner: I found them from a lot of sources, some from just exploring the genre and others I had sung and wanted to sing again or try conducting. I picked these songs because I wanted historical variety, some really early music and some really recent music. I wanted music by really excellent composers who aren’t just known for writing choral music but who wrote other types of music as well.

A: What was it like working in all the different languages? What kind of difficulties did you encounter?
AP: Well, some of the languages were much harder than others; I’d say the hardest languages we did were French and Hungarian. Hungarian because no one I know really speaks Hungarian and there are a lot of really long words and strange letter combinations. With all the other languages besides Hungarian, there were people in the group who knew how to speak them so they could teach the languages to the rest of the group. For example, Simon [Edmonds-Langham ’14], one of the basses, was an excellent German teacher, both Ethan [Tischler ’14] and Carolyn [Mortell ’12] were fantastic French teachers, and Clare Randall [ ’12] taught Italian. Usually what we’d do was learn the music first, on some sort of neutral syllable, like “doo” or “dee,” and add the words way later because trying to figure out the notes is hard enough and trying to figure out pronunciation for a foreign language while you’re doing notes is just too much at once. With some of them, like the French songs, we didn’t learn the music until very recently. That was one of our biggest challenges, just getting the words out.

A: How long were you rehearsing for the recital?
AP: We actually started doing two rehearsals a week, about 90 minutes each, and last semester I was pretty lax about attendance. Once we came back this semester, I made one of the rehearsals two hours because the pressure was on a little more. But luckily we were well enough prepared from rehearsing last semester that there wasn’t really that much last minute stuff to do. It was fairly well balanced.

A: Which professors in the Music Department have had the biggest influence on you?
AP: Wow, that’s a hard question. I would say Jane Alden definitely, she’s just a very rigorous reader, conductor, and scholar; she likes things very polished and so do I. Also, Neely [Bruce]—I’ve taken some private conducting lessons with him and he’s been incredibly helpful to me. I’d say those two have really been the two biggest forces on me.

A: What have you done outside of Wes that has helped with this concert?
AP: Last summer I spent about four weeks at Westminster Choir College doing a bunch of different programs like a choral conducting institute, a choral pedagogy institute, and singing in the chamber choir. In general any musical thing I’ve done, even just jazz, playing piano, or singing with friends—it’s always ear training, which I find helpful for leading a rehearsal or that kind of thing. At Wesleyan, one of the biggest things that helped with my thesis was working with the Mixolydians because I sort of became the music director at the beginning of my junior year. I didn’t really know much about conducting before that, but I just went for it and learned so much doing it and making mistakes, realizing how to better convey what I’m trying to get the choir to do if someone misses or doesn’t understand my cue. That’s definitely been the place of the most growth for me.

A: How did it feel seeing Michael Roth in the audience?
AP: That was nice; it did help that his nephew was in my group, but I did send a personal invitation to him because I was in his class “The Modern and the Postmodern,” so it was really cool to see him there. Also, Doug and Midge Bennet, the previous President and his wife, were there because my group had sung a concert at the Wasch Center for Retired Faculty in November, and one of the women there invited the Bennets. It was really great seeing not one, but two [University] Presidents in the audience.

A: Finally, if it’s not too scary to answer, do you have any plans for after graduation?
AP: Eventually I want to go to grad school for choral conducting and possibly teach conducting at the college level, but that’s all very long-term. Meanwhile, I’m probably going to be moving to New York and I’d be happy teaching music at any level, anywhere, as long as I can have my own musical projects going on.