We always
rehearse at the church on Mondays, so once or twice a year we try to pay our
rent by bestowing upon the congregation our tremendous talent. (Ego knows no bounds.)
It’s the third Sunday of Advent. We have a crack arrangement of “Oh come
Emanuel.” It begins with unison voices singing in Latin. At the “rejoice” refrain, it splits into two-part
open Chinese-type harmony, like you hear in a monastery. The second and third verses are in English with
minor and major harmonies.
We kicked off the service (the Introit, maybe). We did a fair job on the opener. Then we sat through the service. We sang again at the end of the service. We were supposed to be the tail end of the communion
accompaniment. But communion was over
when we got up to sing.
We launched into “Silent
Night”, another neat arrangement with three verses, the first the standard
harmony, the second with the lead soloing while the other three parts “ooh”,
creating some non-traditional harmonies, followed by the third verse where the
tenor and the lead play tag with the melody in an upper register.
To begin the
second verse, the lead goes up one full step to begin his solo. But “summat
went amiss,” to quote a James Herriot character. The lead didn’t step up. We “oohers” couldn’t find anything that
fit. Ted stopped singing and said, “This
isn’t working.”
We were marooned
on an island of silence surrounded by a sea of embarrassment. Ted apologized, first to the
congregation. He is a member of the
church, known by many, the embarrassment that much worse. Then he apologized to us, his quartet mates. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry guys.”
He tried starting
the second verse a couple of times, with no success. “I’ve lost the key,” he said. Dick pulled out his pitch pipe, said, “Here’s
the starting key”, and blew a note. Ted
picked it up and launched into the second verse. Gradually, all three of us latched onto the
right slots for our “oohs” and on we went.
Then came the third
verse. We were a full step below where
we should have been because Dick started us on the stating key and we did not
transition up a full step. The result
wasn’t as disastrous as it could have been.
Actually, it
worked out quite well for the tenor. I
was in easy range, no straining on the high notes. Ted got the low notes. It wasn’t quite as nice for the bass who had
to reach a step lower than normal, but oh well.
I did rather quite well, too, if I say so myself (see the parenthetical in
paragraph one).
All’s well that
ends well, they say. When we were done,
church was done. The relief brought
about by the end of the service greatly outweighed the embarrassment third
parties always experience when performers struggle.
The three of us
laughed it off. Hey, things happen
during live performances. You pick yourself
up and go on. Ted insisted on apologizing
to us privately afterwards. He said what
happened was that he skipped the second verse and went to the third verse.
The experience
surfaced in my consciousness now and again throughout the day. In my usual slow way, toward evening, I came
to a realization: it wasn’t entirely Ted’s
fault, though we were content to let him shoulder the burden.
Somehow, it
dawned on me that at the end of the first verse, one (or more) of us sang the
ending that goes after the second verse, rather than the one that goes after
the first verse. Provided with that
stimulus, Ted naturally began singing the third verse while the rest of us tried
for the second verse. The train
derailed.
Who engineered
the derailment? Was it me? It doesn’t matter, I guess. After all, when the train crashes, it matters
little who was driving. Everyone on
board crashes.
This train
wrecked on a silent night. With God and
everybody watching. There were no casualties. Long live live music.
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