January 25, 2010

A little less singing + a little more listening = a little more music!
by Joel Ulrich, R&S Chair for Music in Worship

Dear Colleagues,

In a recent e-mail from one of my former students who now sings with a community choir, I was reminded of one of the fundamental tasks of choral musicians: “Singing is Listening”…and listening to those around us in order to sing more musically.

“Now my latest choir challenge is a new soprano: she has experience that can't be beat, is more than competent at any difficult bits, already knows how to pronounce everything except Russian, and either knows everything by heart or else reads completely flawlessly.  Just as I am about to be completely overcome with unbecoming envy, she sings SO LOUDLY there is really no point in anyone else singing at all. AND - she's nice too, so one can't even evilly justify much rancor toward her.”

Nothing new here—we’ve all experienced this issue at some point or other in our life work with choirs, either singing or conducting.  We had this conversation at my 1st Covenant rehearsal last week.  Each week, I often share an article or phrase from a book to keep shaping our work as choral musicians—beyond just learning the “notes for Sunday”.  Last week I shared from “Dear People…Robert Shaw”, a biography by Joseph A. Mussulman.  As you know, Shaw wrote regular letters to his singers to review basic technical principles or to document his own personal growth as a musician.  This paragraph came from a letter dated February 14, 1946, in which he recounted four experiences that had taught him one important thing.  I share his “third” lesson below:

“The third lesson came with the Bach motet that the small choir had sung for the New Friends of Music on February 3. (It was a “railroad-rhythmic version” of Bach’s Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied—a distinctively “Americanized treatment”, said one reviewer, which was “giddy and exciting, having somewhat of the sect-group revival spirit about it, more earthy and physical than reflective or devout in nature. A touch more and those on the mourner’s bench might have been sent.”)
Shaw’s words in his letter:

“It is a work of frightening difficulty…and a couple of weeks prior to the concert, we had rugged rhythm and a fair-to-middling sonority—but very little Bach. What we had was not a motet—but a contest.

Fortunately, we also had friends, among them musicians, and among the musicians Julius Herford. He attended a rehearsal, and after we had sung it through, I turned to him. “It seems to me, “ he said kindly, “that if we all did a little less singing and a little more listening, we’d have a little more Bach.”

So much of our work in church choirs is just getting the notes learned for Sunday, with some dynamics and text articulation thrown in for good “measure”.  Hopefully, we’ll never take for granted that the over-arching work of listening will always be our first and foremost work:

“A little less singing + a little more listening = a little more music”!

Share your thoughts and experiences—we’ll share them with each other.
Yours in this ministry together,

Joel