Choral Music: It Gets Around
Created | Updated Sep 25, 2016
More on the joys of singing.
Choral Music: It Gets Around
Sixty years ago I became old enough for the Junior Choir in the church my family attended. I was eight. Trouble is, I couldn't sit still anywhere, let alone church. I was publicly chastised for it during the service.
The next year I was better behaved, but maybe that was because my mother became the Junior Choir director. The years passed and my voice started going lower. I left the soprano section and became an alto. By the time I was old enough for the Senior Choir, my voice had settled into the Tenor range, but with still enough high range that I had four octaves at 16. Ultimately the really high notes disappeared, but some Bass notes sneaked their way in at the bottom.
Since I knew my way around group singing and reading musical scores by now, I kept on with it through college and numerous community choral societies in my adult years. Singing became a good excuse to travel around the world. Granted, it was necessary to learn to pronounce dozens of different languages. Thus I found myself singing Chinese music in Taiwan, Russian music in St. Petersburg, Italian music in Rome and Florence, and French, German, Estonian, etc. in the appropriate countries. Sometimes a foreign chorus came to Boston on tour, and I'd be part of the musical welcoming group. The Hokkaido Choral Society hired a musical grad student at Boston University to write a special choral piece for two choruses: one singing in Japanese, and the other in English, to be performed at Symphony Hall. Both choruses merged to sing Japanese folk songs later in the program. I have no idea what the transliterated syllables meant, but I sang along.
Choral music knows no boundaries. It embraces hundreds of different languages. It is at home in churches, concert halls, school assembly halls, nursing home function rooms, street corners, even ball parks like Fenway Park in Boston. Musical styles are all welcome. Grand opera has choral numbers. There are military choruses. People get together to sing folk songs. And who doesn't like to get the chance to sing along?
