It is something that all choral conductors will have experienced at some point: starting a rehearsal and finding the choir completely lacking in energy. Eyes are down, body language is closed, words are mumbled and the sound projects about 3 inches before falling to the ground. The question is: what does the director do to change this?

The first instinct is usually to inject oomph: with bigger, more emphatic gestures and a bright cheery tone of voice we attempt to chivvy the singers into life. If it is a usually responsive choir that’s just having a randomly dozy day, this will work just fine. But if the unresponsiveness is a common experience with the group, then chivvying becomes counter-productive. You can find yourself with one of two scenarios:

A blog post from last week at On An Overgrown Path conceptualises classical music as a venn diagram with four elements: enlightenment, entertainment, education and engagement. The illustration plots a variety of figures from classical music at different places in this diagram, giving a neatly concise idea of their primary contributions to the genre.

Interestingly, Andre Previn is the only face to appear in the intersection of all four circles, which presents him as a more rounded musician than Beethoven. (Arguably, from this analytical perspective, he is – but you can just imagine the amused and self-deprecating murmur he would emit if accused of this.)

As a follow-up to my recent post on How to be Charismatic when you're not even there, I thought some examples of charismatic writing might be useful. Well, and entertaining, come to that.

First, here’s Jeremy Denk on the unmusicality of programme notes. It was browsing his blog and thinking, ‘Gosh he’s a charismatic writer,’ that led to this set of posts, so it seems a good place to start.

I’ve been thinking a lot in recent years about confidence, and its relationship with competence. The two can so often seem to go together…but not so reliably that you can generalise about the correlation. Indeed, it is when the two seem mismatched that it feels dysfunctional. A novice who feels tentative seems as rational in their relationship with praxis as a self-possessed virtuoso. But a good performer wracked with self-doubt is a cause for concern, while an ebullient mediocrity just seems deluded.

A lot of the advice you get about how to be charismatic is about presence. It covers things you should do in real time to create an aura of magnetism. Henrik Edberg, for instance, tells us to focus on things that will make other people feel good: smile, be confident, be interested in them. Andrew Leigh's book, meanwhile, counsels us to put energy into making eye contact and to act more deliberately.

Now, a lot of this is good advice for improving our social skills. Confidence, warmth, positivity, fluency are all things that are welcome in social interactions, and are frequently in evidence in people with a charismatic reputation. But they are not the same as charisma. Not all socially confident people come over as charismatic; not all charismatic people are positive or charming.

I can hear your ‘yes, buts’ bubbling up already. You want to tell me about X conductor or Y civil rights leader who had the most remarkable presence. And I believe you. But I would also contend that that aura is not the source of their charismatic power; it is at most a by-product of it. Charisma does not inherently require presence because it can work even when you are absent.

Harrogate International Centre: viewed from aboveLast weekend saw the Ladies Association of British Barbershop Singers return to their favourite venue for their annual convention. It was a week earlier than its usual spot in the calendar this year, so it overlapped with the Sweet Adelines International Convention in Houston, where LABBS 2005 and 2009 champions Finesse were making history as the first British quartet to reach an international top-10 placing.

I recently re-read Harold Taylor’s short but classic book called The Pianist’s Talent. I last read it in back 1999, before I had either studied Alexander Technique or learned about Taylor from people who know him. (I’ve never actually met him or heard him play, but I have heard his daughter, Marie-Louise, perform and would recommend the experience to anyone who gets the chance.) So it was interesting to re-visit it with all kinds of new perspectives.

In my posts earlier this year responding to my correspondent interested in “Music for All” I was very restrained in not getting side-tracked onto a question about repertoire and choral ideology that he didn’t ask about directly, but chimed with various questions that used to float about when I was working at Birmingham Conservatoire. This is about how the vexed question of ‘elitism’ versus ‘inclusion’ relates to repertoire.

The stereotypical critique of so-called high-art traditions is that they are elitist, and in a number of different ways. The music was produced for the ruling classes to enjoy; to a significant extent, participation is still limited to those with the means for private education (private music lessons if not a fee-paying school); its beauty and meaning is not necessarily accessible to people who haven’t been introduced to it while young; its culturally privileged position has unreasonably maligned other (popular, commercial, participative, ethnically diverse) forms of music and treated them as less valid.