Apropos of my part rant/part soul-searching about a certain choir member, perhaps any musicians among my 2.7 regular readers out there would care to answer this:
Is this some eccentricity on my part to request strongly that people not sing until they actually have the correct piece of music in hand and have it opened to the correct page and are facing forward with it?
(I am not referring to actively trying to sing from memory, and watching the conductor; but the habit of doing so accidentally while riffling through octavos looking for the the right one, and either singing each note a split second late following the guidance of your more conscientious section-mates; or perhaps worse, kind of "guessing" what the pitches might be -- or would have been, if only Morton Lauridsen, JS Bach or William Billings possessed the same level of creative genius as the guessing singer.)
Universalis, your very own breviary in pixels...
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4 comments:
None of my singers would even THINK of approximating the part while finding the score.
Or, if they thought about it, they also thought about the Death Stare they would get from me.
.....or maybe they recall that I am never too far from my H&K 9mm semiauto handgun!
Maybe that's my problem... I'm not packing heat.
(Save the Liturgy, Save the World)
No, I don't think it's asking too much. And I don't understand why adults have so much difficulty navigating through their books and/or binders. My schola has nine singers and at any given moment, someone is still looking for the piece we're practicing way after everyone else.
In the choir I accompany, confusion reigns continuously, but wait to sing? Come now, Scelata - are you saying you don't want them to "comp along"? (Just kidding - I sang once with a soprano whose improvised "descants" could reduce the entire ensemble to silence.)
BTW - Happy Easter to my favorite midwesterner!
For the more disorganized members...and those with very thick bifocals....and those environmentalists wishing to cut down on paper...perhaps we could install teleprompters with that little dancing note from Merry Melodies? ;)
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