Sightsinging

I’ve been learning Bach’s B-minor mass, notoriously difficult, especially if you’re not a soprano.

I am not a soprano.

The higher pitches are (although difficult to sing), easier to hear and follow – which is probably why they usually get to sing the melody, or at least something melodic. The other parts blend in. You can’t always pick out a single part, and they’re not always singing melodically. To try and tease out the Alto, Tenor and Bass parts – not to mention the Alto II, Tenor II and Bass II – is to work on a Gordian knot. In other words: a hopeless tangle.

But I’ve the problem wrong-way-around. I suspect this is typical of me. Typical of us all, most likely. I worry about how to tease apart the vocal parts to Bach’s B-minor Mass so that I may learn “my part”. What I should be doing is sightsinging “my part” in order to help produce Bach’s B-minor Mass.

I presume the “whole”, because I have a recording of it. I can play the first movement, the Kyrie, as many times as I like to try and decipher how the Alto part weaves in and out of the soprano and tenor lines. I have played it more times than I care to admit, because of something else I don’t like to admit.

My sightsinging is weak.

There. I said it.

Yes, I am a musician and yes, I can read music, but I am accustomed to translating the notes upon an instrument, not producing them first with my voice. Producing them from nothing more than dots and staffs on paper.

This leads me back to how I get the problem turned around. I presume the whole and think my work is to discover and learn my part. I do so by trying to isolate my part from what I presume is the whole, so I can “learn” it.

What if my work is – instead – to produce my assigned part, using the materials I’ve been given (the written music) and together with others to produce the whole? A whole of our own, not the attempted reassembling of someone else’s performance I have dissected first, and them memorized?

You might be able to follow the high notes, but not so much the lower notes that blend in with the other parts and weave in and out, sometimes in strange intervals, and sometimes requiring what is called an “accidental” sharp or flat (a note not normally found in the key you’re singing in) to add a crunch to the music – or build tension, perhaps, or highlight the resolution of it just before the return of a haunting melody line that soothes our soul. Without the tension first, the melody line is merely pretty. It neither haunts nor soothes.

But who wants to be the person singing a B-note next to his neighbor’s A-note? Notes right next to each other on a piano – in a scale – rub and are hard to sustain vocally. Thankfully, most composers put them in only as passing notes – but they’re there for a reason. It’s like the sounding of the shofar – the ram’s horn of the Jews – not exactly pretty, but they do get your attention.

Somebody needs to sing that part, but if we’re working backwards from the whole, copying someone else’s whole, it is likely we won’t chose that part, but instead a melodic, pretty part. Let someone else sing the ugly bits.

Sight-singing is like walking by faith.

The more you do it, the better you get at it.

Other people help – for the most part – to keep you on the path but you have to beware of depending too much on others or 1. you’ll never learn to walk on your own – and you’ll stumble without the others around you or you’re stumble when others stumble around you and/or 2. you’ll struggle with the crunchy bits and you’ll slide to the pleasant harmony and forsake the calls of the composer to pay attention and you may excise the tension out of the piece altogether.

What if I turn my lesson from sightsinging around, now, and try to apply it to my walk of faith?

I see then what I’ve known all along, that my work is to do/walk/say/whatever my part, in accordance with the materials I’ve been given. Those materials are primarily the Bible and the Holy Spirit, guided also by the traditions of those who have bone before me, and in company with those who are on the path with me. I will not always be in harmony, perhaps, with those next to me, but so long as I stick to the music, I trust that the clash or present disharmony will be resolved and I look for the return of the haunting and soothing melody line – the line Oswald Chambers reminds me today is the fact of redemption. The Gospel tells the story of creation and fall, yes, but also of redemption and consummation.

And here, of course, is where my analogy breaks down. We presume the whole where God is concerned, because each of us is still tainted with the fruit of the forbidden tree – the knowledge of good and evil. Accordingly, we presume to know ultimate good and we try to pick our parts out, accordingly. Instead, what we must do is recognize that only God knows the whole and all we can do – all we’re asked to do – is to play our part faithfully and “as written”.

It is enough.

It is more than enough!

One day, we will get to hear the whole. I suspect we will be overcome. That’s the kind of worship that could go on forever. . . . . Where – as my friend Cindy showed me in this U-Tube video (“Louie Giglio’s Mashup of Stars and Whales Singing God’s Praise") - we can sing with planets and whales. . . .

Meanwhile, I’ve been working on my sightsinging.

I read the music alone, first, and puzzle out my part. I use other instruments to test my voice against and to keep me on track. I listen to part tapes (ok – CDs, now, but they still call them part tapes) with my part predominant, but the other parts there as well, so I can hear the relationship and interaction. I practice my part alone, learning where I can breathe and where I must rest and marking the difficult or surprising passages – places I come in a beat before I would expect, or perhaps a measure later; places where I hold a discordant note, while the other parts move quickly all around me; places where my starting note is hard to find, and I draw clues on the paper to remind myself of where to look and how to grab it as it goes by.

The point of the exercise, though, is to sing with others – and with other instruments – and thereby to ‘create’ a performance of Bach’s masterpiece. That forces me to work with others. Alone, no one can do it. Even the soprano line – largely melodic – is hollow and empty as a solo. And you should hear the alto as a solo! It is not something you would enjoy. There’s too much missing. But when we all come together, having spent the time first on our own becoming familiar with our parts as written out, the result is amazing. Less than perfect voices join together to produce a sound and an atmosphere that transcends our individual efforts. The whole is truly greater than the parts, and yet dependent on them.

Outside, we’re losing our way. Some deny that there is written music at all. Others insist on singing only the pretty bits – or the bits they like, no mater how discordant for how long. Some won’t sing with others; others won’t sing alone. Virtually all of us think we are the composer and certainly the director. No wonder it sounds so bad!

And yet. . . . I remember my tendency to presume the whole. I presume I see and hear the whole, but I do not. My work is to play my part – as given and as written – and to keep my eyes on the conductor who, in this larger scheme is also the composer – our Creator. I might not have the comfort of anyone else singing my part with me, but I’ve puzzled it out, and marked the places where I must breathe, the places I am to rest, the troublesome spots – spots where I seem to come in early (or late) – spots where my entrance note seems to have gone underground, and the clues for finding it again and – where all else fails – those lifeline places where I know I can come back in again, even if I’ve gotten lost in the labyrinth and fallen silent for awhile. . . .

In life right now there seems to be a period of waiting. I do not understand the music around me. It sounds loud and screechy and full of conflict as each voice battles for attention. I am in one long rest period – it seems – measure after measure of enforced silence, the melody long forgotten, my starting note not yet revealed, but probably hidden and certainly hard to hit. And yet. . . .

I’m getting better at sightsinging. I’ve had quite a bit of practice. Meanwhile, as far as the rest of life is concerned, I guess I can always count and try to keep track of the passing measures. Sooner or later my part will come back in.