Yesterday I sang Bach's "Laudamus te" in two church services, which necessitated waking up at 6 am (so there all you people who think "amateurs" are irresponsible and dilettantish!).I had to be there at 8:30 sharp because I was singing with a violinist (as well as with the choir director on the organ) and I had never sung that piece with that particular violinist.
I actually got to the church at 8:15 and got an earful from the violinist's mother (he's 20!) about his prodigious accomplishments since the age of two, and all the things she (a former professional singer) had exposed him to. I managed at some point to squeeze in that I had begun studying voice seriously when I was in my 50s (not 100% true in that I had studied and sung in my mid-20s - still way too late for "total immersion") but "squeeze in" is the operative word, in that she did not ask me one single thing about myself (this is the sort of thing I have been encountering often over recent years, that I don't think is my imagination); I just felt like an "audience".
Well, needless to say, when we got up to rehearse, with this woman as the "audience" I was just terrified, and ran out of breath on several of the long runs; something I never do.
It all worked out in the wash, and we did a good job in the performance and got a lot of compliments. And the violinist said he would like to do something again. Maybe we can do the Vivaldi "Domine Deus" over the Easter season (I usually sing one solo every season and believe me, my wheels are spinning a propos of the upcoming one).
Speaking of "total immersion", I have been reading a novel called The Time of Our Singing about two musical prodigies. They had total immersion, too. I am only halfway through the book but can see that this total immersion protected them against the ravages of the "Sixties"; despite being of a mixed race background they had no idea what was going on politically, did not use drugs, and kept to their strict midnight curfew. I did a bit of online research to see if they were based on real people (the novel mentions their going to Juilliard, for example) but apparently not.
I grew up taking piano and ballet lessons, because all the nice Jewish (and other) mothers wanted their children, particularly the girls, to, a la Jane Austen, play the piano a little, draw a little, dance a little, and sing a little (I took some casual voice lessons in high school from a retired Metropolitan Opera soprano who wasn't even ethical enough to tell me to stop smoking or I was throwing my mother's money away). But "a little" here was key. It was for enrichment, not stardom. Of course compared to "blue collar" girls who were not exposed to these things at all (and their adult counterparts, many first generation college graduates) having done these things made me a "rara avis", but in musical circles I will always be perceived as a dilettante.
Well, today I will run through all the things I am singing on September 12. After that I'll revisit the Bach aria I'm supposed to learn for the filmmaker (she has started work on the film already), immerse myself once more in Carmen, reserve a concert date in the free venue, and look around for a solo to sing on "Magnificat Sunday". I may try Wolf's "Nun wandre Maria".
"mother" is not worth a second thought. Mothers of talented children, whether musicians, soccer players, poets often care only about their own child. Their child consumes them and they have no room for anyone else. I saw them frequently at my daughter's figure skating competitions and I felt dreadfully sorry for the children.
ReplyDeleteActually the young man is an extraordinary musician and very nice. I was not upset that his mother was "kvelling" about him, as they say in Yiddish. I was upset that she talked at me for 15 minutes, first about him, then about herself. She never once asked me anything about myself. I have had that happen too often lately (not the "mother" thing, but people talking about themselves, or asking people with prestigious degrees about themselves, and never asking me anything about myself, almost as if I were not there). When my mother was teaching me social skills, she used to quote from Winnie the Pooh saying "A conversation is first one, then the other".
ReplyDeleteI agree with Peg in South Carolina; "Mother" clearly has her own issues, as does anyone who "lectures" you as if you are the audience. I have run into them too, at my children's activities, and would not give them a second thought. Wise advice from Winnie the Pooh.
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