Critiques

First, I got back the CD of the Requiem.  I like how "Liber Scriptus" sounds.  It is better than the two earlier recordings I made of it.  And "Lux Aeterna" has an ethereal quality to it that is appropriate, and kudos to us for ending the long a capella section right squarely on pitch.

That being said, my voice is sooo much smaller than the other singers' which is odd, because I think of my voice as being so big (because I am told this by other people).  Well, my voice is certainly loud, unless I am singing piano or pianissimo, but it is small, if that makes sense.  It has a cutting edge.  So I know I could be heard in a big house.  But it is not "large".

Where does vocal perfection come from?  I hear it in the 20 year old soloist who sang tonight.  Is it something one is born with?  Is it something achieved if you take a fresh natural voice and "build" it, instead of taking a damaged misused voice like mine and try to "fix" it? (I am referring now to the first serious lessons I had at 26 after 13 years of smoking and 8 years of drinking and drug abuse, not to mention bellowing Gilbert and Sullivan contralto roles and screaming my way through "Condotta" for my own amusement; not to the lessons I had after my voice was "rediscovered" at 54 after 29 years of sobriety and 28 years of not smoking.)

I mean my voice is much smoother than it was 8 years ago.  But it is still not enough.

This afternoon I sang "Qui Sedes al Dextram Patris" in a service for people who speak Spanish.  There were probably fewer than 20 people there, but I found the service very moving.  The subject was "Stations of the Cross" and having been raised in an atheistic household I didn't really know what that meant, so it was a huge revelation to me (this was never part of the Lutheran Good Friday services that I have sung in).  There were just two people reading, while the assembled looked at beautiful artwork (in the program) of the 14 stations of the cross.  Several depicted Jesus falling down in exhaustion.  I got caught up in the pathos of it all and almost forgot I was going to sing!

Tonight I survived being only an alto chorister in the Brahms Requiem while someone one third my age sang a beautiful solo.

So I made sure I had the most glamorous dress and the biggest piece of jewelry.  (Many of the women were just wearing what used to be called "slacks" and black sweaters.)