I’ve sung since I can remember. Throughout childhood, people complimented my voice and I dreamed of singing for a living. My senior year in high school I applied to both a university with a strong music program and a university with a classical philosophy program. When I heard from the latter first, I jumped at the chance to go, knowing that competition to get in was fierce and that I was incredibly lucky to be able to attend.
So I gave up on singing.
This was a fine decision for me. I knew that what I wanted was not to be a famous singer or have a flourishing musical career, but to always have singing be a part of my life. And, until recently, I’ve always been able to do this.
Several years ago, I learned to play guitar. Nothing fancy, just a few chords that could get me through most of the country classics and folk songs I grew up with. I used to have friends over once a week for a hootenanny. We’d play and sing until the wee hours. Sometimes I and another stalwart player would be the only ones, but every now and then we’d have a house full of musicians, some quite well known locally.
When this happened the place would rock! There was one night I remember in particular where we were each responsible for teaching the others a favorite song. Someone busted out “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” What a blast to sing and play! I led the group in one of my all-time favorite hootenanny songs, Paradise by John Prine.
This eventually disbanded as people moved on. I didn’t have much of a musical outlet until a friend told me about this amazing choir she had heard and took me to see them. They sang Latin masses at a local church weekly, and having grown up Catholic singing many a latin mass, I was intrigued.
She was right. They were magical. I approached the director after mass and asked if he ever needed any altos. He was quite charming, although a little intimidating, but he did say I could come in for an audition the next day.
Needless to say, the audition went horribly. He asked me to sight sing the Kyrie from Byrd’s Mass for Five Voices, a piece I’d never heard before. Sight sing?! I’d never learned how! I struggled my way through it miserably. When the cacophony came to an end, the director looked at me and said, “You have such a lovely voice…if only you could sing the right notes.”
Amazingly, he told me he would give me the music in advance and that, if I practiced at home, he’d be willing to give me a try. After a few months of making a ton of mistakes, I finally got the hang of it, learning not only to sight sing adequately, but also learning to read Gregorian chant notation. What a joy it was to sing again.
Oh, and the adventures we had! With this choir I traveled to Rome, where we took numerous gold medals in an international competition, and to Paris, where we sang at Notre Dame and the Église de la Madeleine, where Gabriel Faure had been choirmaster. I sang with them for nearly seven years until, in the 8th month of my first pregnancy, I couldn’t breath deeply enough to sing those long soaring polyphonic lines.
Since then I’ve been on what I consider a maternity leave. A 5 year maternity leave. I’ve missed singing terribly, and while I do enjoy singing for my children every night, Baby Beluga just doesn’t quite do it for me.
So I went to mass recently. I saw that they were singing Byrd’s Mass for Five Voices, which ironically had become my favorite mass to sing. Afterwards, several people came up to me wondering when I was going to sing again. Even the director came out to say that he’d missed me and that I could rejoin anytime I wanted.
I talked it over with my husband. The issue is the time commitment. Rehearsals every Thursday evening. Performances 2-4 Saturday evenings a month. He told me that he wants me to go back and that he wouldn’t have a problem with watching the kids more if I could be in charge of them during the day on Saturday, so he can get some writing done. Agreed!
I’m emailing the director right now to let him know I want to sing again.
