Hey, blogging opportunities!
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It looks like I may be wrong. Here at the lovely and quasi-monastic Antiochian Village, they have two computers with internet access and I have some fragments of time here and there as long as I eat fast and trim time in other places. Of course, I could be using that time to be meditative, but I don’t know. Trying to be meditative at the Sacred Music Institute with all of us chanters, choir directors and music people of all stripes is a bit of a grin. It’s not as bad as when I would go to the Sweet Adelines events and there would be quartets singing in every elevator and lobby. It’s not like we’re not hanging out and busting into a prokeimenon just for the heck of it, but it’s a very friendly and vocal bunch all the same, and I have the feeling that if I tried to find myself a quiet nook to read about the saint of the day, a choir director would be bound to come barrelling along and say in a wonderfully modulated boom, “HEY! HowyouDOIN’??”
So the services have had an interesting quality to them. What’s it like to get all the people who usually give the musical direction (either directly or just by being the core choir members and musicologists) into one place? Well, there’s no mistaking — the music always verges on the glorious. Complex numbers are sailed through accurately, and the pitch never seems to drop (which is something so rare that I don’t know if most priests could handle it).But as far as following direction ourselves … well, remember this video?
Yes, it’s true. The people that make such a fuss at you in church every week and — if you’re in the choir — mouth “Watch meeee!” in funny, silent movie pantomime don’t follow direction themselves all that well. It seemed to me we were consistently a beat or more behind the director, and a lot of her directions about getting louder or softer fell on deaf ears. Of course, a lot of things fell on deaf ears because we were also blowing the roof off the place more often than not. That’s the problem with gathering together people who love (and I mean LOVE) to sing. You’ve got more than your share of firehorses that are taking on every song at a full gallop for the pure joy of letting it fly. You’d think that noticing that the music overall suffers from that much jubilation would rein them in, but no such luck. I admit getting caught up in it last night when we were doing “O Gladsome Light” at vespers. We ROCKED the joint. But, y’know, I felt bad about it later.
And as an alto, I can say unequivocably that the blame lies with your basses and your sopranos. Us humble folks on the boring harmony parts don’t get many chances to grab the spotlight, musically speaking. But sopranos and basses get these wonderful swelling notes to sing, and when they get them, they don’t so much sing them as grrrrrow into them. They slowly unfurl the total wonder of it all like an enormous flag on a windy day. There’s a good chance that by the time they feel like we’re all beginning to get the point of just how juicy a note this is, the actual song has gone on in their absence, the altos and tenors are rolling their eyes and making irreverent hand gestures and the director has shot him– or herself. But by golly, they got every drop out of that high-D or low-G. It will never walk again.
Bishop Thomas was at this morning’s divine liturgy, and I thought he had a very gracious way to direct our attention to the problem. In his remarks at the end of service, he reminded us — without spelling out why he would have thought of this — of that scene in “Sister Act” where Whoopi Goldberg tells one choir singer “That’s a pretty powerful instrument you’ve got there.” And then he went on to say that we should — all choir singers should — hold the notes in our ‘instruments’ like the magi held the Christ-child in their arms.
Everyone nodded. Yes, yes. Exactly so. The Christ-child.
Then we venerated the cross and belted out the recessional hymn like Elks at the Oktoberfest.
Oh well. It’s those sopranos and basses, I tell you.
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Awesome post
I’d admit to being one of those ‘firehorses’ sometimes, but I think when you’re solo the effect is better. It can be a little prima-donna-esque for sacred music, though.
There’s a difference there, and I hope I’m not just saying that because I’m probably more out there when I have to solo (chanting verses to troparia, polyeleon, etc.). You need a soloist or chanter to be audible, and — differences in style notwithstanding — you need them to say the words with a certain amount of confidence. A halting, diffident chanter/soloist is distracting.
It all goes back to what complements the text the most. When a group sings, they shouldn’t overpower the text; when a chanter/soloist sings, they shouldn’t underpower the text. That part’s probably not up for debate, but different choir-people will vary as to what constitutes over– and underpowering.
Laughed out loud at the last line. I just picture all those choir directors nodding sagely and writing down the comment for use in their own choirs and never realizing the Elks-like quality of their own singing. This is the same phenomenon — the glorious physical sensation of singing AS LOUD AS YOU CAN — that leads to what the Sweet Adelines call “chord worship,” where the note goes on and on and on because it just feels so good.
And in the barbershop stuff, you get chords specifically designed for that ‘worship.’ In real worship music, you don’t find as many of these suspended chords that take all day to resolve, which is just as well.
But I admit that I had the thought more than once that I would like to hear what would happen if we copied the barbershoppers on one other thing — minimizing or eliminating the vibrato whenever possible. It sounds great when a soloist’s voice gets that controlled warble, but when everyone is doing it, I think it’s part of the reason that the best large choir always ends up sounding like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir — powerful but somehow not nearly as stirring as a smaller group.
In my church choir, I’m a looong way from having such difficulties to solve. But I wondered if there were a way for a big group to sing and not lose the warmth and electricity of a small group.
You’ll be interested to know that there was a choir director teaching how to get a good sound out of the choir, and along with some of the vocal exercises that highlight the right stance, diaphragm connection and so on, she told them about pronouncing the vowels alike to make many voices sound like one. Sound familiar?