Is discipline fun?

All my life I’ve sung: in the bath, the car, wherever. First I sang as an amateur (definition: practicing an art unskilfully, a dabbler.)

Things changed when I took lessons. Stuff sung from memory now became more complex. Scores revealed sustained notes I’d chopped short, small runs I’d ignored, consonants I’d blurred.

Take All Through the Night (Welsh trad.), first sung at primary school. Under V’s guidance, I discovered the third line:

Soft, the drowsy hours are creeping

went higher than I expected and I had, in effect, to re-learn the song. Later, with more advanced songs, I made recurring faults: I sounded notes that seemed logical as part of a sequence but were nevertheless incorrect. The correct notes weren’t as high (or low) as my half-trained instincts suggested. One reason why much classical music is beyond the competence of amateurs who depend on memory alone.

Here’s the point. Many may recognise – even sympathise with – my earlier amateur tendency to burst into song. Singing can often be an expression of happiness. But, such sympathisers might ask, doesn’t some of the joy disappear in a welter of niggling detail?

Quite simply, the joy continues but it becomes better focused. Lessons increase one’s alertness to less obvious melodies which depend on small variations in pitch, typically half-tones. These are harder to learn than – say - hymns written for untrained congregations. But when these subtle variations finally stick, ah! the satisfaction.

Alas, it’s not me. It’s German
 baritone, Olaf Bär, now 61,then
 at his pomp. Listen out for groups of
repeated notes. How does monotony
 become great beauty?

Click on Wolf’s Nun Wandre, Maria, it’s famous for frequent stretches of repeated single notes, repetitions which then launch small magical steps of music, up and down. Sometimes yearning, sometimes poignant. Hard to absorb, adult in concept, brilliant in effect. Most important - joyful to sing.