Good Times at Choir Practice

Last year, after 6 years of playing handbells at a nearby UCC church, I finally joined the chancel choir. Why had I hesitated for so long? I had a number of vague reasons. Joining the "singing" choir would mean that I would have to attend church almost every Sunday, and I was enjoying having my Sunday mornings to sleep in. This was especially important to me, since five days a week I have to get up at 5:30 a.m. for work. The handbell choir plays about once a month, giving me lots of free Sundays. Also, I wasn't sure I could still sing. This vague feeling resulted from the fact that - after a lifetime of being complimented on my lovely singing voice - nobody at this church had ever told me that I sang well. I had come to expect the compliments. Without them, I was losing my self-confidence.

Yeah, that was pretty stupid of me. Or pretty conceited, I don't know which. Probably a little of both.

Anyway, several of the regular sopranos moved away, and the choir director asked me to join. I hesitated for a while (I was going to miss sleeping in on Sunday mornings), but finally gave in. And I was immediately glad I did. A few months later, I encouraged my younger son to join. He's got a lovely tenor voice. Now we're regulars.

I have sung in choirs since age 9. I love singing in choirs - it's one of my favorite things in the world. My natural range is soprano, but because I can sight-read well and carry my own part, I sang alto for years, through high school and college. I sang soprano in junior high school, which meant that when the choir director handed out "Do you hear what I hear?" this past Christmas, I already knew my part - I'd sung it back when the piece was new, in 1962. {cringe} How did I get so old so fast?

The choral piece I have sung with the most directors throughout the years is Randall Thompson's "Alleluia". I sang it in high school and college as an alto, but I've sung it enough since then that the soprano part is more familiar to me. A few weeks ago, the choir director handed it out to perform later this season (Easter? I'm not sure). I'm thrilled, not just because I love to sing it, but because now my son can sing it, too. It showed up on one of our Christmas records for some reason, and he could already sing along. If the tenor part had merely been the soprano part an octave lower, he'd have been all set.

Last night, however, the choir director handed out a piece I haven't done since college. I know this because I'd never sung the soprano part. It's a Brahms "Geistliches Lied" - "Lass dich nur nichts nicht dauren" (translated as "Let Nothing Ever Grieve Thee", if I remember correctly, in the version we're singing). We're singing it in English. We used to call it "Last Ditch" in college. It's good to be singing it again.

There's another good piece we're doing this spring, an arrangement of "Ubi caritas" by Paul Basler. I had never heard of him before this piece. We're singing it in Latin. Kids these days don't study Latin in high school any more the way I did. (I can just hear my sons saying "Yeah, but it was still a living language back then.") This is another experience I'm glad my son is getting. Anyway, the choir director was helping us with pronunciation. The first line is "Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est." ("Where charity and love are, God is there.") He said that we were singing it so that the end of the line sounded like "Deus CBS." Now I can't stop thinking of singing it that way.

Probably the best song we sang this year so far was "Down to the river to pray", as it was sung in "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" It's so mystical, or maybe that's just because of the way it was in the movie, with all those people dressed in white heading for the river to be baptized.

The funny thing is, I don't even have to give up sleeping in on Sunday mornings. Choir generally doesn't meet until 9 or 9:15, and believe me, sleeping until 8 beats getting up at 5:30.