You garden.
He works wood.
We philatelise.
You (pl.) ice cakes.
They high jump.
What makes my indulgence unique? It requires no baggage. One short warm-up and a flabby octogenarian, unkempt and unsexy, becomes a musical instrument. Somewhat battered, pitch unreliable, rhythmically uncertain but - Hey! - capable of rendering Wer ein Liebchen hat gefunden recognisably as a song. On a good day the score unscrolls in front of the inner eye. Not just a man but a baritone.
Singing's portable though it's not without effort. Taking in air becomes opportunistic; getting enough is hard. Forgetting the libretto is a failing the aged flesh is heir to. Best stay with the original since translations can be banal.
What’s a surprise is that the end-product is just as physical as stretching after sleep, diving into the pool, kissing the beloved. Like a pipe on a church organ the body resonates with what is created, offering its own applause. Away from the supermarket check-out the ear feeds on well-organised audio and is fulfilled. On a very good day the throat seems to relax (but doesn’t) and pitched sounds emerge stresslessly, flying like house martins.
The Song is You, sings Sinatra. And he’s right. The version you are creating has never existed before, it is the combined output of your memory, your inclination, your training, and your vocal mechanism. At the last note it will be gone: you may dwell on its successes and ignore its failures.
Your teacher plays/sings a repeated ascending phrase. You duplicate it. There’s no time to prepare, in realtime you draw it out of a ragbag mind and send it on its way. It is accepted. Now here’s another, half a tone higher. Afterwards – paradoxically – you ask: “Could I do that?”
"Away from the supermarket check-out the ear feeds on well-organised audio and is fulfilled."
ReplyDeleteObviously you find singing very satisfying- why not try it at the checkout? Tesco might sign you up to keep the punters happy.
You have a way of pulling others into to your experiences, and helping us to experience these things along with you.
ReplyDeleteAvus: The stuff I sing is mainly for the minority. Only a tiny percentage of Brits, for instance, attends opera. (When was the last time you did?) For one thing it's shockingly expensive, for another it helps to be guided. I'd been listening to "classical" music for at least twenty years before I made my first tentative steps.
ReplyDeleteAlso the songs which meet the German definition of Lieder are virtually unknown by the generation following mine. I'd imagined Schubert's Who is Sylvia? (words originally by WS) was reasonably well-known, since I first heard it at school. But my younger daughter who has a wide experience of popular music had no idea of its existence.
I'm aware that you were joking but I have to pretend you weren't. What you suggest is serious since I have a good deal of affection for the check-out women at Tesco, many of whom have been dealing with us ever since we moved to Hereford twenty years ago. To force my tastes in music on them would be patronising. I do however try little forays, sympathising with their long days, apologising for my cack-handedness when handling change. I do this too, as I recently mentioned, in French supermarkets.
Operatic arias and/or Lieder would be no more welcome at Tesco than they would be Chez Avus. Or are you extending an invitation?
Colette: Thanks for detecting my reasons. I've overdone music at Tone Deaf just recently and have paid the price. Experience has taught me that there's a limited appetite for information from the "other side" of the microphone.
But it had occurred to me that my motives for taking lessons probably seem obscure. To what end? Since I've more or less ruled out joining a choir and I'll never be good enough (in the limited time available) to entertain others, what's the point? In this post I tried to explore the somewhat personal and private joy to be gained in singing for oneself; to know without reference to others (besides V and - more recently - VR) that I now sing Schumann's Im Rhein better than I did six months ago. No doubt it's an incommunicable experience but there's no harm in trying.
You're not above doing it yourself.