Singing Ravel
I once sang under a prominent composer/conductor (who will remain nameless) who may have been the world’s most wonderful orchestra conductor (though I seriously doubt it), but who simply did not understand that choral conducting is unlike orchestral.
If you put your fingers in the right place on a tuned violin and stroke the bow correctly, you’ll get the right note even if you don’t know what that note is. Choruses don’t work that way, because most singy-people don’t have perfect pitch. We have to hear our note in advance in order to produce it correctly.
A good choral conductor does not, for example, harangue a chorus for five solid minutes and then expect them to come in at measure 53 without any introduction, pickup, or other note-notification. It just doesn’t work that way. The conductor I’m thinking of frustrated both himself and us almost past bearing with shenanigans like that—there was talk on both sides of a walkout, until the morning’s rehearsal was handed to a different man who knew how to handle a chorus and the worst snarls got worked out.
Maurice Ravel is just as ignorant of how singy-people function as that conductor was. This Daphnis et Chloe thing is hugely frustrating to learn because of it. I honestly think the thing to do is learn this puppy a cappella, because the choral lines and the orchestra really haven’t got a damned thing to do with each other. Frustrating.
Unless, of course, you have perfect pitch. Which I emphatically don’t.