well I went to mass and sang with the choir.
It was awful.
Today we celebrate the Three Kings event and the choir sang a song to that effect, one we’d sang at the various Christmas venues over the holidays...”We Three Kings of Orient Are...” It’s kind of a play on the traditional hymn.
I don’t especially like it and I really didn’t like that African Noel, but I digress.
This one lady, beautiful voice, says she’s an alto but she can reach way high....doesn’t have a personality to match her voice....but I digress....she wasn’t there this morn.
Now this Three King song is weird in that it is the sopranos who sing the harmony and the altos carry the melody. I don’t know why this is but the sopranos had one helluva time learning the harmony and THIS alto had an awful time reaching a real high note in the melody. We begged the choir director to let us change the parts but the arranger is evidently a cruel person who likes to torture. So we hadda sing it as written and in due course, we kinda learned it.
Except I never could reach that real high note because the lady with awful personality but beautiful voice always came in to save the day and the sopranos got a clue and actually took the piece home to practice the harmony.
The beautiful voice lady wasn’t there today but two other altos were besides me. One of those altos could reach that godawful note but she had been absent during most of the Christmas practice season and really didn’t know the parts very well.
So we sang the song and a)only ONE alto came in when supposed, as the altos had the TOP line and the one alto didn’t know this, the other just does what everyone else does and ME began the song at the proper time because I knew it. So it was all the men and ME, the only female singing at the right time. The other two altos sang with the sopranos and it made me look like I’d mess up.
Which I didn’t but later on that godawful high note comes along and I, in desperation, tried to reach it. It was a FAIL of epic proportions. The alto who COULD have reached that note didn’t cause she’s still singing down on the lower staff with the sopranos. I squeaked godawful and there I am right in front of the mikes.
So, as with most music pieces, there’s a keyboard interlude and we come in at a certain time as written in the music and as we practiced. For whatever reason a bunch of men came in two measures too early. The conductor shakes her head, ostentatiously, NO, I got deer in the headlights eyes cause now I don’t know what to do.
Somehow, someway, some other wise body managed to salvage the song by beginning the wrongly timed verse as if the bloop had never happened, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and we finished it, God Bless.
It was the awfullest rendition of a highly practiced song I’d ever done since being in the choir now over seven years.
But I’m back and I shall shut up.
That song is called “Three Kings from Persian Lands Afar”, in case anybody knows it.
Just the darn strangest arrangement on the planet.
Why not have the tenors sing soprano, the altos sing bass, the sopranos belt out the tenor, since we’re changing things all around?
:::still fuming:::
That’s okay, Fish.
I do a lot of mental griping in church also, for which I should be ashamed and sometimes am.
Little things they do to change words and change the service annoy me unduly.
And people annoy me. People who come to church sounding like they are in the last stages of pneumonia annoy me.
This morning, though, I had a lesson. I had gone to the early service for certain reasons involving the death of a very close church friend.
A person behind me kept yawning loudly. This was constant. I was irritated and thinking, I’m sleepy too, but if I couldn’t stop yawning I would stay at home.
And then ... when I finally had a chance to see who was behind me (it’s a mortal sin to look around in the Episcopal church) I saw it was a sweet young Down’s Syndrome girl with her mother.
God got me hard on that one.
I say this from the experience of a few years’ worth of umpiring baseball......(I’ll leave singing to folks like you who can)
1) You are far and away your own most uncharitable critic. The 98 percent of humanity who couldn’t or wouldn’t do what you’re at don’t know spit about it, and the rest usually have the good sense to keep their mouths shut, since they can recall even worse performances of their own.
2) The only sure way to keep from making a mistake is not to do anything at all.
3) The best teacher is experience, which usually comes from making mistakes. People with lots of experience therefore have made lots of mistakes.
Keep on singin’, Fish. I may even trek out east sometime and come visit your parish just to say Howdy and listen in a bit.
Does just your choir sing or the whole church. Our parish is too small for a choir of more than 2-3, so everyone sings. Since We Three Kings is so widely known, even the little kids sang it. Today it sounded like a barnyard!