THE BIG STORY
More Musical Magic
I did not have space for this personal aside for our print edition, but everything fits online. My solo went as well as I could have hoped. I did indeed enjoy practicing it a thousand times, and never more than on the last day.
As I wrote last month, I did three versions of In Dulci Jubilo in three languages. I got all the Latin and German right, but I began my song with forgetting some of the English! I sang, “Good Christian men rejoice, in heart and heart and voice, (mumble) heed to what we say….” and fine from there. But I was laughing at myself for stumbling over words I knew as well as my name!
Dulci was a perfect warm-up for the main event, an easy-to-sing and emotionally simple song, made interesting by the languages used. The main event was a verse of O Holy Night, emotionally complex and musically challenging. I was stuck with a key where the full octave jump at the end was just out of my range.
What got me so excited on the last day was the wonderful coincidence that I woke up with a once/year perfectly clear airways for singing–head, Eustachian tubes, throat, nasal cavities all in primo shape. The one day/year I can sing the E natural. So for three hours, I kept playing with finishing the big C# with a quick jump up to the E, visioning the Michelangelo mural with the hand of God reaching down with one pointing finger. I envisioned soaring to touch that finger.
But thank goodness for my Korg pitch meter. About half the time I hit the E it was a bit flat. Not good odds, even for a risk-taker. The song was so rich without that maybe-too-flashy fillip, so I stayed with underplaying the big note, and taking the energy of that “divine” on an arpeggio down to a caesura before the new focus, a final, soft, lingering “diviiiiiiiine.”
And the key was finally following my vocal coaches’ advice about emotion. All that analysis above was after-the-fact. While I was singing, I lost all concern with technique. When I missed the words, I was amused. I was glad for the dear Savior’s birth, desolate for our sin and error, yearning for our soul’s worth, thrilled with hope, weariness evaporating, a relieved joy, and most importantly, at the end feeling touched by the divine. I was the song, not a singer.
I blush to recount the lavish praise I received, except for the most important one: “That was the most emotional singing of that song I’ve ever heard.”
Hallelujah!
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