More questions: choirs, mostly

[mrissa]

More questions! Okay. One of you asked if there are factoids with which I'd prefer to be introduced or prefer not to be introduced. Not really; I trust you-all to choose appropriately for the specific introduction, and to remember that I am Upper Midwestern, and therefore a string of positive adjectives is likely to make me want to hide under the table.

Another of you asked if I'd ever sung in a choir, what part, and what some favorite pieces were. Well, I was in choir from 9-13 in school, and that was good fun. I liked that a lot. Our middle school choir director in particular was very good at picking a mixture of songs that were interesting and fun to sing in different ways -- fun in a "technically difficult but satisfying" way for one piece and fun in a "songs that you know but not in detail" way for another and so on. She had us do a medley of songs from Les Mis, cut for the junior high crowd. Interestingly, what this mostly means is that the character arcs of Valjean and Javert pertaining to evil and redemption were almost completely cut, and we were left with political stuff, leavened with child abuse and abandoned pregnancy. You know: for kids. When I was in middle school, you could do band and choir both, and so I did. In high school, one could, theoretically, but the choir director was not known for doing anything fun to sing or listen to -- lots of 19th century secular hymns about fields of graaaaaaaaaaaaaaain, was the reputation -- and I was enthusiastic enough about the flute to be willing to pick band over choir. The band director was pretty bad as well, and I only stayed in band one year, but I didn't reconsider and join one of the choirs later.

I was a soprano at the beginning of that interval partly because I still had my kid-soprano range and partly because in our grade school choir, soprano meant "any girl who could carry a tune in a bucket or the rare boys who had a great classical kid-soprano." (Yeah, hi, you.) Around the end of sixth grade I lost about five notes off the top of my range, and by the middle of seventh grade I had them back on the bottom of my range and was a full-fledged (very happy!) alto. And as I recall, Mrs. Haight's talents extended to classifying people by their actual vocal range and picking pieces that had interesting bits for all vocal parts, so that the altos weren't stuck going, "oooooooh," and the basses, "bum bum bum," for every single song. So we were mostly willing to cut her slack if there were one or two songs like that, because it'd come around.

As an adult, I was browbeaten into singing in a church choir because my friend Lisa, the accompanist, was a dirty rotten traitor and told the choir director I had a good voice and could sight-sing harmony lines. (Since I had no intentions of ever attending practice, this latter fact -- about which Lisa was treacherous but not dishonest -- was key. It also taught me a valuable lesson: do not make excuses if you don't want to do something. Simply say no.) "Good voice" is debatable, but certainly I have a good enough voice to sing in your average church choir. I've described my role in that choir as "alto border-guard" in the past, and I stand by that. Would that we'd been handed machine-guns: "No you are not a soprano, and you will not slide up to try to sing that part because you are not a soprano for a reason, and right here is where your note goes, no, dummy, here, or else."

This particular choir was undersized and under-talented, and I was not enthusiastic about a single one of the songs we did.

The problem with choirs for me is twofold, and I'm not sure which is a bigger problem: first, they have people in them. Lots of people. They are a many-people event that requires a frequent time commitment. I have difficulty with those. And second, I stopped enjoying performance singing. I can do readings -- that kind of performance is fine with me. (Especially if people laugh at the right spots.) But I just don't enjoy dance performance or musical performance. I can enjoy participation in dance or music, but sometimes the line between performance and participation is a little shaky, and then I stop having fun. I sing around the house a lot -- a lot -- I am singing Ben Folds Five's "Philosophy" right this minute as I type -- and I was raised in a house where singing around the house was extremely common. Some of my earliest memories are of holiday evenings -- really any time my folks had Monday off -- how they'd put me to bed and finish whatever grown-up chores they had to do, and then they'd pull me out half-asleep, and Mom would sit with me in the old blue velour armchair, and Dad would sit in the wooden rocker, and they'd sing, and I would drift in and out of sleep while the sun set outside and they sang together. And now there's a timprov, and as I've mentioned other times, we make up little songs at each other and sing musical jokes and references at each other. markgritter was not raised singing folk songs, but seven and a half years has done a fair bit for his repertoire, and apparently for his enjoyment of same.

But performance creates expectations that I am not interested in fulfilling. There are skills related to performing a song that are entirely in addition to being able to sing it well. When my mom and I sing tight harmony -- which we can do because we have essentially the same voice in two bodies -- I am doing something with just-her, and we know each other's expectations, and if Dad listens or if he comes in with a deep grounding line, he's still part of the thing we're doing in a very comfortable and familial way. And choir audiences aren't, and they can't be -- and that's not a defect in them. It's not a problem. It's just something that makes me, specifically, want to avoid singing in a choir, the same way I want to avoid performance singing of other kinds. The audience collaborates in a different and much less active way in a performance, and they're still right there. So. That's me and choirs.

Comments

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

I was just thinking recently about what a musical childhood I had, for someone who never had much formal music training. We didn't do much singing--although some. My dad loves to make up silly songs, so he was always singing these things. Such as "Don't flap your stems at me," an ode to a philodendron. Also, the very educational, "Never mix ammonia and chlorine bleach." Kind of a jazzy tune, that. He also used to practice the piano every Sunday night while my sister and I took a bath. Mostly Bach. Even though I had no idea what the music was at the time, I find that Bach is very much a part of my permanent personal sound track. We listened to a lot of classical music records. That combined with looney tunes and other older cartoons rather immersed me in classical music in a way that I'm not sure the kids are getting, now. My kid is getting it, because he is a suzuki kid and he can *play* Bach, and he most certainly listens to and enjoys a variety of music. But I venture that the average kid in the average family is not getting much music in these here modern times. A little sad.

I'm a terrible singer. Some day I am going to take voice lessons so I can sing in the presence of others. Performing is way beyond any sane ambitions I've ever had. I would like to be able to do some playing with others in a community orchestra setting or fiddling circle or some such some day. I probably could, now, if I could find the right group. And had the time. Time, time, time....

[aszanoni.livejournal.com]

Ah-hah!

This is what happens when I get mislaid electronically... someone asks you for a story, and you tell it here, and this is a happy thing.

COOL.

- Chica

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh, good, you saw this. I read your last e-mail and was wondering how uncouth it would be to just provide the link.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure most kids were getting that kind of classical music immersion when we were kids. In fact, I'm pretty sure most weren't. So I suspect it's a matter of "these modern times" starting with the advent of the radio or at the very least of the TV. (And other people popping up saying, "My parents played a lot of classical music around the house!" are more likely to convince me that I have a certain cultural skew to my friendslist than that the culture on a whole has been knowledgable about classical music for the last N decades.)

My parents listened to classical stuff, but also folk and rock. Jazz was new to me as of acquiring a markgritter.

Time and priorities, they'll get you every time. I hope you find time for the singing lessons you want. My piano teacher taught voice as well, and she kept talking to me about doing voice stuff along with piano in the summers (because summer lessons tended to be less structured), but by the time we worked on the things I'd been spending summer mornings working on, we never had the time. So it's all been choral stuff for me, no individual stuff.

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

You have a good point. I was thinking more of the way children's TV programming is scored differently than it was. (And Looney Toons were old when I was a child.) The music is all rock, or techno or whatever. So, for example, whereas Lully Gavotte is a very familiar tune to me for being background music to the TV programs I watched, the youngsters growing up now may have never heard it. My violin teacher also pointed out that now that schools generally do not permit religious music, kids are coming to her never having heard "Silent Night" and such. It's not a tragedy or anything, but it is part of a particular cultural package that we have come to take for granted.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Never having heard "Silent Night"? I don't believe that at all -- I've been to Target and heard the electronic Santa playing it for all of the last two months of the year. But never having sung it or never hearing it sung or played well, that's probably an important gap all by itself.

I haven't been keeping up on kids' cartoon soundtracks, and I'm a little surprised that they're playing new music when copyright is such an issue. Among the other virtues of having Beethoven and Verdi in the middle of a Bugs Bunny cartoon is the certain knowledge that they are safely out of copyright!

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

She teaches Christmas songs (and Hanukkah songs) to fill that gap, but yes it is weird and hard to believe. There are always a certain number of kids (not jewish) who are unable to hum common Christmas songs when she begins teaching them. It makes the teaching all the more challenging.

I imagine that there is a whole industry devoted to licensing music for cartoon network, etc.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I have heard from my band director mother that her kids are really, really impressed that she knows the words to every page-long beginning exercise. Everything from "You are my Sunshine" to "This Land is Your Land". She can sing any of them (baritone, yes, but still singing) and the high schoolers just stare.
She has a class of kindergartners, too; they're going to know all the best songs. The town was ready to strangle her when she taught every five-year-old "I'm Henry the Eighth I Am" for a concert.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

The problem with choirs for me is twofold, and I'm not sure which is a bigger problem: first, they have people in them. Lots of people

That was my main problem with choral singing. When I worked for Hennepin County I participated in the City-County Chorus - and it was a good experience in learning to sing parts, and I enjoyed it for the most part - but it was such a large group that in order to hear my own voice well enough to stay on pitch I had to cup an ear, and this was something to which the director objected. I still enjoy group singing in smaller groups, though.

[seagrit.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think the "modern music" soundtrack for television is becoming more popular particularly because it benefits the artists; they gain exposure to an audience that otherwise may not hear their songs, who may then go buy the song or CD because they heard in on __________ TV show.

This shows the class of TV that I watch, but I've especially noticed this in "Smallville", "Charmed", and "Buffy the VS" that a lot of the music is contemporary, and sometimes the band featured is not one that was well known when that particular episode aired first. On Smallville, they even used to show the album cover, and mention the band and song after the show was done ("Featuring the musical talents of so-and-so") and play a small clip to remind you what it sounded like.

[aszanoni.livejournal.com]

-twinkle- It was perfectly timed. I got a chance to read up on your posts and that made me happy.

No, no. Uncouth would be the bird flying at me in a moment. Which is Doc's current master plan - he's sure that eventually I'll carry him if he's desperate enough. Because it's GETTING DARK and it'd be a crime against birds for me to not carry him.

I love Doc. He's insane. -grin- I wish I had a little not-red wagon. I wonder if I could tow him then...

Heh. No birds go with you!

- Chica

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

"Veronica Mars" does that, too, but I don't think it's as applicable for little kids' TV, is it?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Heehee. Your mom is Satan. That's so cool.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ah. That's a much more singing-specific objection to the number of people than I have. Mine is just general misanthropy, or introversion at best.

[pariyal.livejournal.com]

performance creates expectations that I am not interested in fulfilling.
That's why I enjoy being in the church choir: it's challenging in several different ways (musically, intellectually, emotionally) but when it comes to doing "for real" what we've practiced it's not performance, it's worship. It would perhaps be different if it was a church where the music is incidental, rather than intrinsic, to the services.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

My experience of church choirs is that external performance-like expectations are different rather than absent when music is intrinsic to the service.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

Ah. I can be misanthropic under other circumstances, but I hardly ever object to people when I'm singing with them. :)

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I think you might enjoy ceilidhs or Canadian kitchen parties (and I'm entirely sure I would). What the bit about singing with your parents made me think of was Stan Rogers' "Straight and True":

In my uncle's kitchen, the songs are bitchin',
[A line that I don't know goes heeeerre,]
I can hear my cousin's voices singing
The very best that they can do, and it
Doesn't matter what they're drinking,
The ocean brings the flavour through,
And if none of this is fancy,
The love is always straight and true

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

My favorite example is still when they ended the show Northern Exposure with Iris Dement's "Our Town".