After staying up too late at the Cottage 3 Social Hour last night, I sleep through breakfast and Morning Prayer. So my day begins with the morning rehearsal sessions. Michael Messina starts us out with yogic exercises, and we move into Early Will I Seek Thee by H.C. Adler. I am reading and singing my alto part, which at the top of page 3 unexpectedly moves quickly up to the E above middle C. I’m normally uncomfortable in this range, but, buoyed and supported by the rest of the choir, I manage it in, for me, a particularly sonorous rendition. Just as I’m basking in silent pride at reaching the note, Michael says, tactfully, “of course, you altos now realize that your part moves back and forth between the middle and top staves.” Now that he’s pointed it out, I realize that that beautiful E belonged to the tenors.
We sing I Will Arise, arranged by Alice Parker and Robert Shaw. This one is regular and fun. Each verse rises and then resolves, until we make full circle to find ourselves positioned at the threshold of the next one. There’s a really satisfying alto moment at the end of the first verse when we end down at F below middle C. That note comes straight from the belly. Sopranos and altos sing unison for the rest of the song. Sometimes the tenors and basses sing at half our pace; other times they sing at the melody speed but weave up and down against each other. The tenors get their chance to soar slowly in the last few lines, ending with a high, heartfelt, and sustained “Oh!” that wends down through descending tones singing “there are ten thousand charms” to rest in the same note we all end on.
We move through several service songs and seem to be getting more familiar with the music. Susan Anderson Smith then steps to the front and leads a rousing discussion of prophets, illustrated by a short lecture about 19th-century English parliamentarian William Wilberforce, whose convictions and experience of God enabled him to lead England to abolish slavery. We all offer from the cheap seats our own definitions of prophecy and examples of people we regard as modern prophets. The main conviction I come away with is that prophecy is, as Susan says, God’s word “happening to you.” It’s impossible to sidestep a passion for justice in our unjust world when God happens to us in as powerful a way as God happened to the prophets. She links prophecy to musical performance through the sung poetry of the Hebrew tradition, and we all sit a little taller as she drives home the point that we choristers are prophets who proclaim God’s word and God’s love through song.
Michael Kleinschmidt takes over for the second rehearsal session and leads us through a bit of challenging Latin pronunciation in Exsultate Justi by Lodovico da Viadana. It’s made more challenging by a changing rhythm that gets going quite fast at times. For some reason, “psal-li-te e-i” trips me up the worst. I think it’s all the switching back and forth between e and i sounds. But Michael delights the choir by having us practice talking through the words in “Miss Piggy” falsettos, in order to get the sound coming from our heads rather than from our chests. He runs the sopranos through their paces in Psalm 8 from The Saint Helena Psalter set by Gerre Hancock, when their part include a couple of runs that includes an octave jump to A above middle C. The men channel Gregorian monks in a resonant and moving plainsong.
The day goes in a regular rhythm, the schedule obviously designed by a musician. After lunch we have four workshops: on service playing, vocal techniques, children’s choir, and the design of service sheets. Then there’s dinner, and we return to the chapel for a last rehearsal and Evensong. We do a beautiful requiem set to music by Eleanor Daley and also rehearse As We Gather at Your Table, the song she wrote for this conference. We stand in a wide circle to really hear this beautiful song. We hear another stirring talk by Susan on music as a public healing ministry and then rehearse service music. We’re getting to the stage where we can pay more attention to dynamics and tone, and the music is progressively taking shape. When we move to the front of the chapel for Evensong, the increasingly familiar music fills the space among us, and the holy spirit is palpably moving within the sacred space we are creating through words and song. After the service, a group gathers in Cottage 3 to socialize, but I feel the urge to be quiet. After a full day spent in harmony with others, I am in a state of grace—uplifted and peaceful, looking forward to the ways tomorrow will deepen and enrich the experience of God’s presence we have found here through song.
Rachel McCann, Chorister
Church of the Resurrection, Starkville, Mississippi
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