Oh, the power of early impressions. Frequently, I am reminded of the awesome power that teachers have, yet still I am amazed when a lingering, subconscious remnant from a lesson surfaces to my conscious mind. Last week is a marvelous example of this.
As part of a July 4th celebration, we were singing “America, the Beautiful.” I had no trouble singing along until we got to the chorus. Everyone else plowed boldly into “America, America, God shed His grace on thee.” But I couldn’t keep singing because I had suddenly reverted to the lyrics we learned in third grade: “am, is, are, was, were, be, being been, have, had, has, do, does, did.” And of course, I couldn’t finished there. I plowed through the rest of the auxiliary verbs list. (Fortunately, this was done in the quiet of my mind, so there were no witnesses to my rather Pavlovian response to the music.) We sang three verses of the song; not once did I make it through the chorus without practicing my verbs. (In case you were curious, the same thing automatic recovery happens with the songs I learned for the fifty states, the presidents, the prepositions, and the books of the Bible. For all that, I don’t know the song for how a bill becomes a law, but I still know that process in sign language since that’s how I memorized it for my freshman government test. I’m starting to realize that my brain is still full of data that I am not using; why hasn’t it dumped it yet? I need that space for other things.) I’m running into this same problem with my language studies this summer. The pneumonic devices I used to help myself remember my vocabulary are becoming intrinsically integrated into how I use the language so that now I cannot say, “I like coffee” without sounding like a robot, nor can I say “I have no husband” without sounding lost and forlorn. Those sound cues extend to experience outside the classroom, too. When I hear the soundtrack to Rudy, I’m mentally driving through Wisconsin to college. When I hear John Williams Summon the Heroes, I immediately find myself back in Atlanta for the summer Olympics. As I was walking out of church a few weeks ago, I heard a swarm of cicadas, and I thought I was back in Asia. (Of course, loud power tools sound the same as cicadas, so every Monday morning when I hear the neighbor’s lawnmower, I also think I’m back in Asia.) While I’ve certainly heard those sounds many times and in many places, they have become intrinsically intertwined with each other in my memories that I cannot think of one without the other. Hmm, the power of those sounds is so great that my mind got so absorbed in this idea that I forgot that I sat down to write about a completely different topic. I guess this was a successful sobremesa then.
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As the soprano soloist glides through her recitative, in my seat with the chorus, I inwardly fidget in anticipation like a child on Christmas Eve: “And the angel said unto them: ‘Fear not.’” Not only is she one of my favorite soloists, she is building towards my favorite moment in the entire Messiah.
With a rush of adrenaline and euphoria, I rise with the choir as the soprano then announces us: “And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying . . .” Being part of the angelic host singing “Glory to God” in Handel’s Messiah is my favorite part of holiday busyness. I do like the finale of “The Hallelujah Chorus” as the audience is invited to sing with us in a milieu of voices unequivocally enjoying the song. But standing in preparation to sing “Glory to God” exceeds “The Hallelujah Chorus” for me. In that explosion of music, I find my “peace on earth” that is so elusive during this time of the year. Even if the rest of the concert flops, that rush—that thrill of emotion—carries my spirits beyond the chaos of the season. A line from “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” captures the moment that the swell of music helps “our souls . . . soar to uncreated light.” Singing Messiah allows my spirit to soar. While usually I like to hide behind others and avoid performing, when a piece resonates deeply, I feel compelled to share it with those I care about. And the music, like food or books, becomes sweeter in sharing it with others. Victor Hugo wrote, “Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent.” Perhaps that’s why it becomes so important for me to share it with others: my music expresses what I cannot put into words. Even in writing this, I have been fumbling for the right words. When I ask my fellow musicians, “You know that moment when we stand for ‘Glory to God’? What’s the right word to describe it?” they know the feeling I mean, but they, too, cannot name it. In sharing the music with others, I don’t need to search for the words because they have experienced it, too. Music allows us to soar to uncreated light, but in that transcendence, music becomes a tie that bind us together. I chose the wrong instrument. Harp, piano, cello, organ, flute, guitar, drums, bells—out of all of the instruments I’ve dabbled with, I chose the wrong one to perform with. I chose voice. Last week, during my choir’s dress rehearsal, I watched the orchestra tuning in their seats below us. Yes, the key word was seats. The choir stands on risers. Now risers are lovely, especially for those who, like me, need all of the vertical help we can get to see the conductor. But risers usually aren’t deep enough for chairs. And these weren’t even deep enough for a body holding a music folder.
I do love choir. Each semester we pull out a new piece to learn. Sometimes I’ve heard one or two of the movements before (like Carmina Burana: “Trust me,” I’d tell friends and family when they said they were unfamiliar with the work, “You’ve heard it before if you’ve watched any action movie ever. Or even just seen a trailer for an action movie.”) and have the fun of learning the new-to-me movements, hating them the first three or four (or seven) rehearsals until, without noticing the change, I melt in anticipation of my favorite motifs or even chords. Sometimes I’ve never heard any of the piece or composer before (like Faure’s Requiem or Lauridsen’s “Sure on This Shining Night”) and fall in love at first listen and can’t imagine my music life complete without them. These are wonderful reasons to come to choir practice each week. But performances—that’s when I realize anew that I chose the wrong instrument. The orchestra doesn’t have to march in a line to their spots on risers, the musical equivalent to Russian roulette. They get to mosey in and calmly claim their chairs which are in exactly the spot they left them. Yet, rarely do I end up at the spot that I was in during rehearsals. How, I wonder, do people really gain that much weight in the few hours between dress rehearsal and performance? Once I ended up with only enough space for one of my feet on the step and spent the entire concert precariously balancing on that one foot so that I could see over the front row. In years of watching the orchestra perform with us, I’ve also never seen anyone in the string section get bowed by someone sitting too close to them either. But in our concert this week, I’m convinced that the person behind me was resting her music folder on my head. At first I just thought that she was hitting me accidentally and tried to scoot further forward in my spot, but my toes were already hanging off the edge. Then I started to notice that the music folder didn’t just tap me and retreat. It stayed in place until I ducked my head to throw its balance off. That realization added a whole new level of creative interpretation to my singing. |
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