Humble Pie, part two

My choir sings one song per service. We’ve practiced that song several times and I know the alto part fairly well, basically through memorisation. I can see that the notes on the page go up and down, but I can’t look at a note and know how it should sound. If I get started on the right note, I can generally work my way through the verse.

What continuously frustrates me is the hymns. Rather than getting swept up in the melody, I want to pick out the alto line and sing it. But I can’t. I look at the notes and I just can’t find and follow the alto path. The organ is playing the alto line (and the bass and tenor) but I can’t weed my notes out from the blizzard of sound. It’s like being blindfolded in a forest.

There are some hymns that we sing regularly where I’ve memorised the alto line. It is so lovely to create harmony, to press against the mass of the congregation and create something more complex. We have a lovely bass in the choir, Roger, so when we sing hymns, I have sopranos in front of me, altos on either side, and bass and tenors behind me. And some hymns are just joyful when we hit our stride. I often don’t have any love for the words in the hymns, but I just love voices singing over and under each other.

The other humbling thing about a choir is realising that one of the reasons I’m in one is that my voice isn’t that great on its own. Joined with 10 or 12 other people, I can be part of creating a beautiful sound. On my own, not so much.
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