The Choir Conductor’s Thoughts On Singing
The jury of a church choir festival said a lot on good singing. Observe all the advise would make singing something like a dreary exercise, a scare instead of a joy. It’s fortunate, there’re no conductors ever performing exactly the same.
I’d rather like the jury set as an example how they would conduct and hear their choir sing rather than hearing their advice. We certainly could sing better if we took easy pieces but we readily took the risk singing more difficult, better music, incur many mistakes, “accidents”, while it’s improving our ability and our having a richer repertoire, like the risks, beautiful views of climbing a mountain instead of a hill.
I almost never could hear, understand the words a choir sings, except we’ve sung it before. And I thought, what if it was in Latin or Italian or Russian. Even the conductor and the singers might not understand. I don’t believe a conductor of an orchestra always took the time to go deeper into the lyrics of an opera or oratorio as he has almost no time for it. Besides it isn’t certain that he masters the language, the philosophy, the lyrics. So what’s singing in a foreign language, even with a wrong pronunciation or vocalized just in “Ah”. It would be as beautiful as playing the organ or piano. Isn’t it the music that should “speak” eloquently? And we sang Mendelssohn’s “Songs without words”.
And why should it be church music? Did the pastor, the congregation know that a lot of church music was not church music before but a loved, beautiful song. It was later on provided with lyrics suitable for the church service. My wife said, “just put there a word of God, or Jesus in an opera song and they wouldn’t complain if it were sung in the church.“
Hearing Gospel songs, I might think they’re love songs. We deliberately sang love songs and we said, insisted, these are Songs of Solomon of this age. Did you ever read his love songs? And we even sang Ave Maria in a protestant’s service. Don’t we decorate the church hall with flowers. Isn’t that also something as worshipping, praising God? I said to them.
I conduct the way I like, exercise my members the way I think best, not the way the jury, the teachers, professors think it should, as I never could, ever would, do. And I’ll still sing with my choir, though with only one member left. Ha, ha, ha.
February 2009
The jury of a church choir festival said a lot on good singing. Observe all the advise would make singing something like a dreary exercise, a scare instead of a joy. It’s fortunate, there’re no conductors ever performing exactly the same.
I’d rather like the jury set as an example how they would conduct and hear their choir sing rather than hearing their advice. We certainly could sing better if we took easy pieces but we readily took the risk singing more difficult, better music, incur many mistakes, “accidents”, while it’s improving our ability and our having a richer repertoire, like the risks, beautiful views of climbing a mountain instead of a hill.
I almost never could hear, understand the words a choir sings, except we’ve sung it before. And I thought, what if it was in Latin or Italian or Russian. Even the conductor and the singers might not understand. I don’t believe a conductor of an orchestra always took the time to go deeper into the lyrics of an opera or oratorio as he has almost no time for it. Besides it isn’t certain that he masters the language, the philosophy, the lyrics. So what’s singing in a foreign language, even with a wrong pronunciation or vocalized just in “Ah”. It would be as beautiful as playing the organ or piano. Isn’t it the music that should “speak” eloquently? And we sang Mendelssohn’s “Songs without words”.
And why should it be church music? Did the pastor, the congregation know that a lot of church music was not church music before but a loved, beautiful song. It was later on provided with lyrics suitable for the church service. My wife said, “just put there a word of God, or Jesus in an opera song and they wouldn’t complain if it were sung in the church.“
Hearing Gospel songs, I might think they’re love songs. We deliberately sang love songs and we said, insisted, these are Songs of Solomon of this age. Did you ever read his love songs? And we even sang Ave Maria in a protestant’s service. Don’t we decorate the church hall with flowers. Isn’t that also something as worshipping, praising God? I said to them.
I conduct the way I like, exercise my members the way I think best, not the way the jury, the teachers, professors think it should, as I never could, ever would, do. And I’ll still sing with my choir, though with only one member left. Ha, ha, ha.
February 2009
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