Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Second and Final Rehearsal for My First Recital, and Some Additional Thoughts on What Should be Sung in Church

Today we had a runthrough (start to finish) for the recital.  I am still congested.  So is everyone, so it seems.  My partner had a friendly visitor on Sunday who was congested (not sick, just congested).  A nurse came to see her yesterday and she was coughing and clearing her throat (allergies, not a cold).  Everyone says it's the worst season for allergies on record (I don't know if I have any; I just feel congested, not sneezy).  My teacher said he couldn't hear the congestion.  He was having an allergy attack because the accompanist has two cats.  The high Rossini didn't go as well as last time (I didn't hold the last high B flat) but I got through it and nailed every note cleanly.  And I sang the high and low Rossini arias back to back with no glitches.  I still felt congested singing "Mon Coeur" (the easiest thing on the planet for me to sing) but after my teacher sang his second number and I started the third part of the program with "Amapola", suddenly I felt fine.  Then I felt congested again singing "I Dreamt I Dwelt" but did not have any tension creeping in; mostly because I took the breaks I had planned to. 

My teacher told me not to sing much tomorrow, just to do some exercises, and then to sing my regular routine on Thursday, the day of the recital.  He said I can try a section of the high Rossini cabaletta if I want to, right before the recital.

I'm lucky I work at home, so I can basically just "cocoon" for 48 hours and sit here and edit manuscripts and make some money.  And not have to talk.

After my last post (which got a lot of hits; I also posted it on Facebook and shared it with people from church) I realized that I had some lingering thoughts about music and church.  First and foremost, for good or ill, is self-interest.  I want to sing.  I want to sing music that allows my voice to soar.  A church is a comfortable place to do that, and a church with a smallish choir is a good place to get enough exposure (solos, being the obvious "leader" on a second soprano part) to make me happy.

But secondarily, if I am going even to hear music in a church, I want it to go high. I mean this partly literally but also figuratively.  Of course everyone loves a low bass and choirs need them! But I want to hear something that soars.  (I used that word before; I guess I'm thinking that church should mean the Heavens.)  Classical music soars, African-American spirituals soar, gospel soars.  I could be happy hearing Aretha Franklin in a church (she's a pastor's daughter, by the way).  Bob Dylan never.  (I realized that my gut loathing of him centers around the sound of his voice, not his words.  I recently edited an article that used some of his "poetry" and I tried to look at it divorced from that horrible drug-damaged, raspy voice, and was somewhat able to do so.) 

I don't want to hear gutteral voices, raspy voices, voices that sound like they are in tatters from years of drug abuse, drinking, or smoking and I don't want to sing music in a key so low that it is best sung that way.  (And I'm not talking about a low classical piece like "O Thou That Tellest Good Tidings to Zion!  I'm talking about "Someone to Lean On" in a bass - not an alto - range, which was what was on offer at the UU General Assembly I went to in 2005.)  I know that I ruined my chances of ever being the singer I could have been by smoking, drinking, and abuse of diet pills and speed, and there are days when I would give everything that I have to go back to 1964 and do it over.  I don't want those memories triggered in a church, which for me (and many others) is meant to feel like "sanctuary".

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