Calm After the Storm

Now we have new music to work on.

Ironically, one is a piece by a little known 20th century composer named Booth (he used to be the music director at the church in the 1930s) that was inspired by Lohengrin.  I would never in a million years guess that the piece was written in the 20th century.

It is absolutely gorgeous, but the soprano part involves way too much sustained high singing for this mezzo.  We're only talking about Fs and Gs, but it's a page that sits up there with noplace to take a breath. The alto part is in a decent rage (goes up to an E flat).  So I told the choir director that I would sing alto on that piece.  Ideally (and I only thought of this after the fact), with the current assortment of singers, the piece should be sung SATB as written with the second sopranos dropping down to the alto part for the last page.  This would be fine if there will be a high soprano or two to sing the top part.  I have no idea who will be there that day.  The irony is that I easily could have sung the soprano part in the Mendelssohn because it moved around and there were piano interludes between the parts that were sung.

Basically the problem (for the choir as a whole) is aside from the handful of trained lyric sopranos (who don't sing regularly) what the section has is me (a trained mezzo) and a group  of women with no training.  I can sing higher than any of them except one, and none of them can sing legato, so they need someone to hold the part together, sort of the way egg holds certain cooked dishes together (odd metaphor, I know).  So it's fine if the part doesn't sit high, then I can play that function.  Otherwise not, although it's rare for there to be a piece in so high a tessitura that I can't sing it particularly if I can sing full voice. (The alto section already has at least one, maybe two, women who sing with a nice line, they just don't have a wide range.)

Of course the upshot of all this is that high sopranos (and of course men) are highly prized and women with lower voices are not.

In any event, this is a beautiful piece of music.

So now it's back to working on my birthday concert.  This will be an opportunity for me to do a variety of different kinds of things that I don't usually: sing nonclassical music, research some of the songs and come up with things to say in between the sets, and connect to the audience through the spoken word.

I can invite 10 guests.  Whether my partner is one of them I guess remains to be seen.