THE BIG STORY

Holy Jubilation!

BY RICK BOETTGER

KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER

 

I’m going to be singing a couple of songs, big songs, that need some ‘splaining. Also I am bursting with so much enthusiasm I can’t think of anything else to share with you.

The new Keys Chorale has its big holiday show at the college coming up Dec. 5, and I’ve got a solo in it. We were allowed to choose our own songs to audition, and I chose something I’d love to hear if I were in the audience, and which I, as the performer, will love practicing a thousand times. I couldn’t narrow it down to a single choice, so I’m doing a short medley of two.

Number one was easy: O Holy Night, one of the most beautiful songs ever and my personal Christmas favorite. I’m doing the first verse. The second song I found while researching other holiday favorites: In Dulci Jubilo, known now as Good Christian Men, Rejoice. I’m going to sing the first verse three times.

That’s because the song has a remarkable history. It was composed in 1328 by a German mystic who heard angels singing it, and he joined them in a dance. Originally it was in German and Latin. In the 1800s, a version in Latin and English became popular. Today, we usually sing the loose all-English translation: In dulci jubilo means “in sweet rejoicing,” making me wonder how the “men” snuck into the title.

So, I’ll sing the version you know first, then the same verse in Latin and English, and then again in the original German and Latin. The German mattered. My Italian and French are weak by soloist standards, but I learned my German when I was young enough to pick up the pronunciation.

Then Will Johnson, our superb young pianist, will bridge us into O Holy Night. The first song is peppy, jubilant, dancing in the streets in celebration. O Holy Night expresses a desperate relief at salvation. The first delights in rejoicing, singing, the manger, our heart’s joy, sunshine, the mother’s lap. The second remembers sin and error, no worth to the soul, a weary world, leading to falling on your knees in wonder at your salvation.

In the first song, every word is happy and light. In the second, I feel an old agony washed away by a blessed relief. It is a wonderful range of emotion and, hey, that is the essence of music. The best advice I got on singing with emotion was, oddly, from an oboist who used our guest apartment when he was playing in our symphony (we put up visiting musicians). He says every note you practice, whether on an oboe or vocally, has to have all the emotion you want it to convey in the performance. Otherwise you’re practicing singing words and notes, not music.

So I am forced to do a wonderful thing when practicing my medley: Feeling, over and over again, these complex and rich emotions of overwhelming joy and desperate, reverent relief. By the way, for my secular readers, Christmas also celebrates the rebirth of the sun, and I think of the natural and nativist implications of the season when singing, another layer of emotional complexity driving the meaning.

I had a major Oops! at the audition. I brought a version of O Holy Night that only jumps a fifth in the last “di-VINE” instead of the full octave that you are used to hearing at the end of the third verse. I could hit that note in the key I brought, but it would sound clearly like I was making an effort, and that is a distraction. The most charged notes must be about the emotion, not, whew, the singer hit the pitch. My goal in performing this medley for you is to have you forget about me singing, and to hear these great songs in their glorious emotional splendor, as if for the first time.

The new chorale has almost doubled in size under Jim Cutty’s expert and amiable direction. Getting someone with his credentials and dedication to work for (as it were) a song for FKCC is one of those only-in-the-Keys stories. We experience outsized talent for our small city. The other soloists are all more experienced than I. And the literal high note of the concert for me is Melody Cooper’s super high C in a playful version of Jingle Bells. You won’t miss it. Sounds maybe like someone goosed an angel.

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