All Notes Are Not Created Equal

If you've read more than, oh, five posts in this log, you are aware that I love making music. I passionately love making music.

I began playing piano by ear at three-and-a-half. I started accordion lessons at four, piano and theory at five, organ at seven, and auditioned for the church choir at eight. During the audition, the choir director discovered my perfect pitch. I consider myself a musician first and foremost, and piano is my primary instrument. Choral singing would be my second instrument, if choral singing can be defined as an instrument.

I don't love all genres of music, but I respect talent and perseverance. And once I am exposed to and begin learning a choral work, I am in love with it by the time we stand on stage behind the orchestra to perform the work.

As I'm learning, I love observing the director to see what inspired phrases he or she is going to use to make a point or teach a lesson in a manner that we will retain the information at least through performance, if not forever. Many singers will grab that inspired phrase out of the air and write it in their music. In fact, over fifteen years ago some singers in The Washington Chorus memorialized Robert Shafer's inspired phrases in "The Book of Bob". When he moved to City Choir of Washington two years ago, some singers were searching for a Book of Bob to again be able to quote those phrases.

Cleveland Orchestra Chorus has a total of four rehearsals with Maestro Porco to be able to learn all our holiday concert music. Some of the music is tried and true; some requires a lot of practice to get the notes down. We are charged with doing all that practice on our own, in order that rehearsals will go swiftly and smoothly.

Many singers sing the notes and the words without speaking them first, without stopping to think about the vocal inflection of that spoken phrase. Think about how you would speak "What sweeter music can we bring?", as opposed to singing "what sweet-er mus-ic can we bring", concentrating on making sure each note was held for its proper duration, at the notated volume. The tendency is to make the two syllables of sweet-er equal, to remove the natural inflection that comes when speaking "sweeter", accenting the first syllable. Portions of last Monday night's rehearsal were spent just speaking the words to pieces we were rehearsing, trying to hear what the natural speech patterns were. Our goal? To enable the audience to understand clearly every word we sing.

The inspired phrase that Maestro Porco used to help us remember? "All notes are not created equal." I grabbed that and wrote it in my music. Then our rehearsal notes arrived by e-mail this morning and, again, I saw "All notes are not created equal."

I must remember to speak it and hear it before turning it into music.