Unwrapped but welcome

 

Two significant Christmas events.

A phone call from the GP (while we still lay abed) announcing jabs for both of us next Wednesday. At Saxon Hall where wearing woad will be optional. One advantage of having lived long past our sell-by dates.

I felt for V, my singing teacher, still much younger. I would have willingly kissed the backside of our wretched prime minister to have her criminally jumped up the jab queue, given what she contrived last Monday. 

It’s technical, I fear, but I’m bursting to communicate. My upper limit is F and I can reach this during warm-up. But warm-ups are like mounting a ladder, small steps that take you upward easefully. Reaching F (even some lower notes) in a song is another matter; I may get there but the strain is inescapable and the change of tone audible.

The answer is to produce the singing sound from the front of the mouth. Almost as if the teeth were vibrating like a clarinet reed. Easier said than done.

As it happened we had another problem where the key lay in better articulation, the lips re-shaped non-intuitively. Back and forth, through the Skype cameras, we gurned like vaudeville comedians.

“Do that again,” said V after several minutes. I did so.

“And again.” I did so. And again.

“Is that it?” I asked, hardly daring. V nodded.

In the bath (at home I hasten to add) I went through my repertoire, searching out the hard bits, lips formed into a trumpet. Gliding not straining. Yeah.

In the past I’ve been there for a few seconds, then lost it. Now I’m fairly sure I have the bastard by the goollies. Courtesy V.

Why do I do this? It means nothing elsewhere.

Because it’s hard.

Me, a larger fragment

It’s just after seven in the morning and still dark. I’m clean-shaven, the wheelie bin has been pushed to the end of the drive and I’m nearing the end of five years of weekly singing tuition. That’s potentially 250 lessons and I’ve missed very few. Say 230 sessions.

For four of those years I’d have driven through Hereford’s heartbreakingly lovely landscape to V’s tiny village (see pic). To stand next to her piano. This year I’ve waited in my study for her Skype call at 08.30. I’m not her first pupil of the day (some are in foreign places) yet she always looks fresher than I do.

Things have changed. Lesson anticipation used to thrill me, now it’s simply part of my life. But no less important, no less rewarding. The repertoire has grown to about seventy songs, some came easily, some were a struggle. During the early years some of my faults were overlooked, not now. The coming lesson will be all detail.

Today it will be Weep You No More Sad Fountains, the words written by an anonymous Elizabethan four hundred years ago. The setting by Roger Quilter (died 1953) one of V’s favourite composers. Here’s a 17-year-old baritone doing Weep you no more. CLICK.

But the biggest change is that I’ve entered the whole world of music making. I listen differently, I admire skills that were previously obscure, I’m aware of the disciplines musicians willingly accept. The songs I now tackle are not those that immediately reveal their qualities.

I self-isolate (with VR of course) but I’m eighty-five. A chance encounter with Covid-19 could blow me away. I don’t suppose I’d be happy about that but knowing something about music might make it less of a wrench.

It’s a bit like Wotan’s spear.

Higher

The Doon; blooms are fresh and fair, says the song

My singing lesson starts at 8.30 am. My study may be grotty but the world is tranquil outside. It's hot indoors and the window is closed so as not to irritate the neighbours.

Ploppetty-plop goes the Skype music and V's face appears on the PC screen asking what progress I've made with Ye Banks and Braes o' Bonnie Doon (see pic), working alone over the past week. Then there's the warm-up.

I imitate V singing the five-note phrase over and over, ascending, attending to variations in tone, pitch and repetition she slips in slyly. Sometimes three extra staccato notes, sometimes a hint of sorrow. My voice is solid and resonant but V's face remains neutral.

Up, up we go. To gain each higher phrase I must push harder but this must never be obvious. We are close to my ceiling and still V is expressionless. And now I suspect why. I sound the F which is the limit. This done, V does not slide back down to the E but sings the next one up, G. I do too. Shaky but it's a real note.

Now we drop down, with V adding all sorts of complexities. The warm-up is over. A ghost of a smile and V says, "You now a have two-octave voice."

My first thoughts are not of myself. I've been V’s pupil for nearly two-hundred lessons. From scratch.  She recognised I would do what she told me without lolly-gagging. Progress has not been straightforward since I hadn’t enough life left to learn all the technicalities. She picked songs to build up a serious yet varied repertoire. Her patience has been inexhaustible. The thrill of singing was never absent. Perhaps she already knew I could hit that G today.

Is that G mine or hers?

A classic case?

Irony can be tricky to understand:

● Use of words to express a meaning other than the literal meaning and, esp., the opposite of it.
● Incongruity between actual circumstances and the normal, appropriate or expected result.

Examples

● A marriage counsellor files for divorce
● It's ironic that computers break down so often since they're meant to save people time.

And then there's me.

A recent combined cough, common cold, feverish state, left me with a disturbed stomach. But today was singing lesson; I was there on the dot. V produced the score of Schubert's, An die Laute (To the Lute), a song I have never heard, never even heard of. After 60 minutes I sang the two verses in tune, on the beat and adding interpretation. Several big firsts. V nodded, then said: "Good on you. But what you did took it out of you. Look after yourself."

At brunch back home there are rillettes, fatty and a firm favourite. They are intended as a treat. Normally I'd gobble them in a minute but I can't face them. Wrote this as therapy. Don't tell me I'm better off 'cos that'll cause me to grind my teeth, good news only for the dentist.

Stepping up

Plastic Yamaha may have a more important role to play

I hate missing singing lessons. They’re an essential fixture and will be until I succumb to gagaism, fire, flood or any other Act of God. V has said if old age deprives me of car insurance she’d drive over each week. “You’d accompany me on my plastic Yamaha?” I asked, knowing we haven’t space for a Joanna. “I’m up for that,” she said, cool as a Dry Martini. I was touched.

Last night my runny nose morphed into tight coughing; today I was due at Little Dewchurch for my estimated 171st. lesson. My bedroom warm-up (Ah-ah-AH-ah-ah) sounded precise and plangent, though singers are poor judges of their own voice. In the car, sucking a mentholated pastille, I warmed up again; still OK. I decided that if my throat turned out to be crap I’d opt for purely verbal instruction. As it happened, V gave my voice thumbs up.

Which was just as well. This morning turned out to be a big musical step forward, only exceeded by January 5, 2015, when V first said my voice had a future. It will take more than 300 words to do it justice, it may not be comprehensible or even interesting to many, but forgetfulness compels me to provide some sort of permanent record. Pardon my indulgence.

The song. Nun wandre Maria (Journey on, now, Mary). Hugo Wolf, one of Europe’s greatest German-speaking song-writers along with Schubert, Schumann and Mahler. Previously (ie, as a listener) I could never get on with Wolf, finding him austere, remote and – musically – slightly odd. The German lyrics are genuinely poetical and were written by Paul Heyse, a writer and translator awarded the 1910 Nobel Prize for Literature.

What’s it about? Joseph urges a tiring Mary on towards Bethlehem (“... your strength is weakening, I can hardly – alas – bear your agony...”) . The song’s musical heart is the refrain, Nah is der Ort (The place is near), repeated five times, each progressively more heart-rending.

The difficulties. It has a comparatively small dynamic range and many of the prominent intervals are quite small. The impression is one of musical subtlety. Also Wolf frequently favours sequences in which one note is repeated – in one case nine times. Wolf introduces time variations, again quite subtle, to these one-note wonders and the singer must concentrate to make the best of them.

It’s a masterpiece and this morning – with V’s help – I uncovered a tiny example of how masterpieces happen. The revelation lay in that refrain. Unfortunately for monoglot Brits, the translation above has been anglicised. A literal translation of Nah ist der Ort would be: “Near is the place”; this maintains the order of the German words and is vital. “Place”, a humdrum almost anonymous word, has been deliberately chosen by Heyse the poet to label the exact spot where Christianity originated. A word without the frills at the end of a line! A gift to the composer which Wolf receives with eager hands and reacts appropriately.

Recognising these small acts of genius – on behalf of the composer and the lyricist – helps put those one-note lines into perspective but it’s harder for me to focus usefully on that causal relationship. This is all new stuff to me.

I can do no more now than provide the means whereby you too can share this masterpiece. Here’s Olaf Bär gently acceding to Hugo Wolf’s bidding.

Readers with better memories than me will recognise I posted about Nun Wandre Maria (and Olaf Bär) as recently as May 6 this year. But that was pre-revelation. Today I’m more grown up.

Gripped

Monday's singing lesson was hard. And mildly unbelievable. The last seven notes of Gaelic Blessing ("Deep peace of Christ to you") are all the same pitch – B. How hard is it to sing the same note seven times? Fact is, the notes have different lengths yet must hang together as a musical phrase.

Also, in singing any note you are not only influenced by what went before, you’re anticipating what's to come. A "time travelling" state of mind I’m still coming to terms with.

"I've worked you really hard today," said V.

Quite true, I thought.

"You've done really well."

It hadn't seemed like it.

"It's amazing how far you've come."

Have I? But then I'm nearing four years of solo tuition, that should be the case.

The room was silent from our labours. V sat at the piano (“It needs retuning,” she fretted.) and, because of intermittent back pain, I sat on an upright wooden chair. The much-scrutinised score, source of all rewards and difficulties, stood near-vertical on the music stand.

V said, "The better you get, the more picky I have to be."

I thought. "The better I get the more pickiness I must be prepared to take."

Not a brilliant aphorism but it would pass.

V said, "Don't work on Gaelic Blessing at home. We're going to forget it for a while."

That was a blow. There were answers I’d envisaged trying, but V's the boss. She’s the one who has brought me this far. As I drove home the embedded words of Gaelic Blessing rose unbidden in my mind/throat and I mumbled them before I realised and stopped. Same again, today, as I waited at the hairdresser’s.

I don’t actually possess music, it possesses me.

Prelude

There’s singing and there’s the anticipation of singing.

These days I don’t always rise at 06.25, the duvet may be just too seductive. But on singing-lesson days, always. Sometimes at 06.24, impatient for my other world. Downstairs for a swig of fizzy water from the fridge. As it slices over my palate - painfully – I think about my throat. Will it work? The house sleeps and it’s too early for even a tentative note.

The computer beckons. Time for another post? Why not one about singing which is not really about singing? Comments for other blogs, perhaps? While their authors sleep since some live in the USA and must – despite their mild outrage – lag behind me in rickety old UK.

VR will still be abed when I return to the en-suite. As the green blob of shaving gel morphs into foam, I open my mouth amid all this whiteness. Creating a ragged sort of hole. Can legitimate noise proceed from this void? Briefly I require reassurance.

The car must be backed out of the garage and the document case containing scores chucked on the back seat. The case is heavier now. How many pieces of music sweated over since January 2016? Fifty?

I sit on the couch, waiting. I’m always early. Then out to the roundabout on the A465 which – I’ve never understood why – is free from traffic at this time. The drive on narrow roads takes twenty minutes and passes through heartbreakingly lovely Herefordshire. Farms, sheep in fields, the tiny village of Kings Thorn, the detached houses of the privileged. I’m singing to myself now. The la-la-la-la-la sequence of the warm-up. An easy-ish song, say, Time Stands Still.

Now I’m parked in V’s impossibly steep driveway. I press the doorbell, the dog barks, the door opens...

Just another day at the office

Recent events had disrupted my singing lessons. I felt out of sorts, out of tune, if you like. I rang V's doorbell urgently.

"Problems?" asked V. There usually are, even when it's only been a week.

"You said I wasn't singing Es Ist Ein Ros... high enough. But it starts with that weak e; I lack confidence, don't feel I'm going to make it. Should I elide "es ist"?"

"No. Emphasise the "s" more."

Always these weird tricks. Even weirder, they work. "What's next?" asked V.

"In Santa Lucia there's a six-note jump between "..prospero è il vento." and "Venite al l'agile..." Another weak e in "Venite". My tone changes."

I demonstrate. V says, "You're singing the e as uh. Let your lower jaw swing open more and add some a to the e." Adding a-sound to an e-sound is hard but I sort of get there.

"And...?" says V.

I fidget."Look, you're terrific at choosing new stuff. Surprising me, taking me up another level. It's just that..." I rootle through my bulging bag of scores as V looks on bemused. “Just give me a hint,” she says.

“It’s my favourite aria...” More rootling. “...in Messiah.”

“Which is?”

Finally I find the damned thing. “He Was Despised.”

The piano accompaniment (an orchestra in real life) is difficult but the vocal line is comparatively easy. Soon I’m singing in the shade of that familiar soaring soprano voice and I’m thinking... what am I thinking?

“It may not be progressive enough,” I babble. “Perhaps something harder. But...”

V ponders. “It’s for an alto, of course. But it’s straightaway obvious you like it. That could be interesting.”

Little of the lesson left but we sing it again.

I’m no longer out of sorts.

DESPISED, for an alto but lowish

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.

Stronger than glue

I had no formal training in music and started buying LPs willy-nilly: Mozart's clarinet concerto, Bach's toccata and fugue in D-minor, the Kleiber/Concertgebouw version of LvB's fifth. My preference was for instruments.

VR's background was similar. We were poor but managed a few LPs. Almost accidentally we heard the mezzo, Janet Baker (later Dame Janet Baker), and started collecting her even though I still favoured pianos and violins over voices.  Eventually we had about 700 discs.

Three years ago, as I've exhaustively recorded, I had this urge to sing properly. How so? asked V, my teacher, at the first lesson. My answer was vague, unsatisfactory. But here’s a resonance.

Last night BBC TV devoted an hour-and-a-half to notoriously camera-shy Janet Baker, now retired. As testament to her greatness acquaintances were required to remain mute and just listen to one of her recordings. Spoken judgments were brief as if words were distrusted. Faces and tears said everything about that wonderful voice and supreme musical intelligence.

There's a 1966 black-and-white film of her, ridiculously costumed, singing what may be a definitive Dido's Lament:

When I am laid, am laid in earth...

I probably agree. But who am I?

Just one thing. As Dido, she sings the line "Remember me" several times. The last time, high up and powerful, majestic yet poignant, she faces those es in "remember". The vowel e is dull and unrewarding for singers. Dame Janet accommodates her es, all different. With great skill.

Meanwhile I’ve struggled over “Fresh joys we’ll pursue” in the Purcell duet I’ve mentioned. That e in “fresh” is a bugger, highish, demanding a change in intonation. A most tenuous link between us yet I choked as I watched telly.  Music – stronger than glue.

Report card

One of V's great skills as a teacher is judging how much praise to hand out. This makes sense. Mostly I'm following her instruction and/or copying her example and there's a limit as to how praiseworthy this is. That’s what I’m there for. If I'm serious about singing - and believe me, I'm damn serious - I should (privately) dish out my own plaudits, not as self-aggrandisement but in recognition of what's "right".

Late 2018 and early 2019 were periods of significant progress, and V has soberly recorded her approval. Not so much praise as favourable accountancy.

Last Monday V asked me unexpectedly to sing Michael Head's setting of The Lord's Prayer. (Yeah, I know it's strange. Me, an avowed atheist. But I'm also - by now - some sort of musician. And Head can get the best out of a voice.) Lord’s Prayer dates back to my first year when my as-yet undeveloped voice struggled with the higher notes:

For (big swell coming up) Thi - i - I - INE
Is the KI - I - I - INGDOM!
The POW - OW - OWER!
And the GLOR - OR - ORY!

Familiar words way up my range and which demand full wellie.

Since then I’ve tackled LP at home, improving as my voice improved. It's been months since V heard me. On Monday V's living room reverberated with the “right” notes. After just one run-through (always a good sign) V started to comment but couldn't find the right word.

I suggested "religiose" as a joke but for once V didn't laugh.

Silence. Then: “Those high notes went pretty well.”

But now I too was silent; didn't know what to say. I’m not sure I'm in it for compliments.

So how does one respond?

RR's LATEST

Like that!

Why learn to sing? Because there’s magic in it.

Still working the German Advent hymn (see, "Supplied by my private NHS") Normally a four-part song, we sing it as a duet. I take the main line, normally sung by the soprano, while V sings accompaniment. It's within my range but I sound weedy and unconfident. Yet I adore the song.

V: Sing just the first line:

R: Es ist en Ros entsprungen

V: The final note (-en) is a tiny bit flat. Sing it slightly higher.

R: (Ditto)

V: Still flattish

R: (Ditto). V: (Ditto).

Bad news. My sense of pitch is reasonable but not good enough to detect this sort of fault when I practice alone at home. I become mildly depressed. Only spitting distance from wholeheartedly depressed.

V: (a) You're singing -en as -ern, add a bit of an a to the e. (b) Your mouth isn't wide enough.

(a) Looks hard but is actually easy. (b) Non-intuitive, thus a seeming lack of control.  A wider mouth will lead to an entirely different sound, even a different note.

It does. The tiny flat has disappeared. "Perfect," says V, but as a throwaway.

The same instructions are applied to the initial word (Es) of the first line. And lo, the song is demonstrably within my range and I’m properly at ease. Best of all I’m looking for more songs pitched higher.

Supplied by my private NHS

On the tiny planet Zog the operational part of the tube (US: subway) system is being widened. Locomotives equipped with sharp-toothed, voracious boring machines (moles) travel along existing rails increasing the tunnel radius to accommodate larger trains. A huge project?  It would be but for two reasons:

(1) The planet Zog could be accommodated in the average UK garden shed.

(2) Zog only exists to illustrate how it feels to own and depend on my right leg.

Sciatic pain expresses itself in different voices: a shrieking soprano resulting from raising bone marrow to boiling point, an interminable Heldentenor aria chewing away at soft tissue, and a rumbling bass which suggests the skeletal frame is collapsing into rubble and will blow away as dust.

But who am I to complain?

With a leg like that it's hard to sing well. Manfully I do my solitary rehearsals but my voice lacks precision. I do have a prescription though, provided by a friend. When my leg throbs like a tom-tom I turn to this:

ES IST EIN ROS ENTSPRUNGEN

It makes me cry but better to cry at - or for - this than the pain.

It's a four-voice part song (thus unaccompanied) here sung during Advent in Cologne's main railway station. A flashmob impromptu, albeit carefully rehearsed. In English it translates as A Rose Has Sprung Up. More elegantly: Lo, How a Rose e'er is Blooming.

More recently I'm learning to sing it as a duet with V. From a sitting position.

First steps?

A strange evening.

This is the week we should have attended the Christmas market in Aachen. Instead Occasional Speeder is spending a few nights with us to push out the boat in local watering holes. Back at home more indulgence.

West Midland News was lurching to its feeble end when it was replaced by songs from the Simon and Garfunkel Central Park concert. OS had linked the TV to her Iphone and it was music I'm very familiar with. I sang along as best I could, amazed at S&G's pell-mell speed.

One thing led to another. I sang a couple of my warm-up songs to illustrate some musical point or other and OS seemed amazed. I explained that these warm-ups were merely preludes to more serious songs like Mozart's O Isis und Osiris. Which I also sang. OS was even more amazed. How long had I been learning, etc?

OS played an Adele song, saying longingly she wanted to be able to sing it. I listened to Adele and said fine but first OS would have to learn a form of recitative singing (In German, Sprechstimme - speak voice) and widen her range. OS doubted her ability. I said pick a carol; we sang In The Deep Midwinter together. I then deconstructed OS's singing, getting her to lengthen her vowels ("...frosty winds made m-o-o-an") and make her consonants cleaner. Then we sang an ascending sequence of scales.

I listened to Adele again and imitated the first line slowly. Got OS to imitate me. Told her she had the basis of a singing voice.

It was 01.50 am, time for bed.

There we left it.

Peas in a pod

Some posts lack universal appeal, as today (No. 956). The audience will be limited, though no one is actively discouraged.

Inevitably it’s about singing.

Most people sing, or at least make musical noises. La-las, whistling, humming, one repeated line from some dim song. Not me. I find myself murmuring stuff  I've been taught. If from a recent lesson I may envisage the score and follow it in my mind's eye. Such swank! Non-singers will see this as stultifying, more like self-discipline than music-making.

They may have a point.

But that's only the start. Recognising I'm sub-consciously doing, say, Schumann, I stop. Take a deepish breath, consider the opening notes, remind myself of their difficulty (all openings are difficult), call up my proper singing voice from a point north of my bladder, re-start. Seriously.

I make an error. I stop, find the solution, re-start. Spontaneity is lost.

But what is gained? A sense of wholeness between my body (The parts that create sound; hands that sketch phrases; a bridge between consciousness and heartbeat which perceives rhythm) and my mind (Exhilaration at being a source of these sounds; relish at words now enhanced; critical awareness of technical matters).

Trained athletes must experience something similar. There must be parallels between preparing for - and putting - the shot and singing An die Musik – each for the thousandth time. Channelled wilfulness leading to  a conviction: he/she is now a shot-putter, I am now a singer. Immediacy counts. Otherwise the shot-putter goes back to a desk  in an insurance company and I to the unspecifics of retirement. Immigrants from another, demanding world.

Taking singing lessons without a final aim is self-regarding and futile. But I am those things anyway. To me singing is a willing companion and who’d reject that?

Odd one out

Yesterday I attended a funeral (not my own nor VR's) at St Michael's in Garway. The terrible acoustic was probably due to age: the first stone-built church was established there ca. 1180, a tower was added ca. 1200. Ugly? Functional is kinder.

There were three hymns, none of which - at first glance - I knew. Strange, my hymn repertoire is huge. This aggravated a problem I share with V, my singing teacher. Her gorgeous and powerful soprano voice can be an embarrassment in congregations which don't pull their weight musically. The same to a lesser extent with me. But if I didn't know the tune (the words suggested this might be the case) must I remain mute?

The choir (old but not as old as me) launched into "Be still my soul; the Lord is on thy side" and a memory - decades old - stirred. I'd heard this tune, or part of it, once before. Most hymn tunes are predictable and I was able to guess at the way the lines ended. I even foresaw the point where the music became more obviously major key, the text changing from exposition to triumphalist. I sang louder and with greater certitude. Pleased, I might say, as Punch.

"I heard the voice of Jesus say" was completely new but halfway through the first verse I’d become fully prepared, except for a grace-note line ending that recurred regularly and always caught me out. As to the third hymn, the initial verse of each pair may have been unfamiliar but the four-line refrain I knew well: "How great Thou art" (learned, by the way, at another funeral). No problem.

Does this sound trivial? As an atheist I bring nothing in the way of belief. May purposeful singing compensate?

You do this for fun?

Singing is getting harder as V concentrates on how songs should be sung (ie, interpretation). Last Monday I had a significant failure when V, looking totally knackered, wondered if our attempts were a step too far.

Re. Quilter's setting of Shakespeare's O Mistress Mine. With "Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty..." the note supporting "kiss" is highish and the requirement was to sing it without strain. On my own I'd never quite managed this and the solution was fiendish. As I failed, I talked compulsively. I emailed V apologising for behaving like a half-wit. Her reply contained comfort and a further solution. We shall see.

Last night BBC2's Trust Me, I'm a Doctor had a scoop. Certain activities may "boost feel-good chemicals in the brain," with possible implications for dementia. Volunteers tested stationary bicycle work, dancing, and singing against a control activity (reading a washing machine manual) and blood samples were taken. Manual-reading resulted in virtually no change, bicycles and dancing showed encouraging increases in the higher teens but singing was way up with a 40% increase.

Singing had been chosen because singers admit to "euphoria". I can confirm that. Even more surprising, my euphoric outbursts have recurred over the past 33 months. It seemed ironic that these two events should arrive in the same week but V's reply allayed any fears. Not that I’d ever thought of jacking in singing.

Singing, as with all music creation, gets harder the more you do. It has to because you start matching yourself against the pros, many of whom did doh – re- mi in the cradle. I’m never going to get there. Age is one factor. More important I’m not intuitively musical and must compensate with enthusiasm and doggedness.

Here’s a slogan: Musical euphoria - cheaper than cocaine!

Why and how

I sing.
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?”

Fruit of my loom

Singing for others never seemed likely; it was enough to learn, improve and pass on to another song. Subconsciously I accepted that starting from scratch at eighty wouldn’t leave me enough time to entertain an audience, always assuming I had an ounce of natural ability.

Some time ago I posted recordings at others’ urgings. Responses varied from lukewarm politeness to (more often) silence, confirming my suspicions. In any case such exposure was premature. Several basic requirements (notably a voice that was demonstrably my own) hadn’t yet been met.

I sing far better now but still as a student. V dispenses approval carefully: I need encouragement but praise must be precisely and technically worded. I’m a retired wordsmith and alert to what I regard as insincerity. Recently we had two fabulous lessons and the exhilaration, on both sides of the piano, was authentic. Coincidentally three blogging friends then asked me to post recordings. But I still can’t be sure there’s any transmitted pleasure in what I do.

Here are four songs, sung and re-sung for the hard disc, graded according to musical ambition.

Der Lindenbaum, from Schubert’s Winterreise song cycle. Elegant melody in narrow dynamic range. Suitable for advanced warm-up (but without the gruff one-bar fall-out).

I will give my love an apple. More staccato, slightly faster, folksy, a change of pace.

Time stands still. Sublime Dowland; seemingly easier on the singer and thus full of less obvious traps.

An evening hymn. Early English masterpiece by Purcell. Way beyond my abilities and I fear my tempo is uncertain. The Hallelujahs, as you may imagine, present many problems; had to cut out final ones. Very much work in progress.

Three in English, unusual for me. I prefer singing in German. I can’t deny that snobbishness plays a part in pretending to be a musical executant.

NOTE V's house is remote and I couldn't use my phone to play these recordings at my lesson yesterday, so I sang them. This was salutary:

(1) I do not have the score for Der Lindenbaum (it's coming shortly as a birthday present). V pointed out that the third verse, starting "Ich musst' auch heute wanderns..." switches to a minor key on the piano, before switching back again. Whoops!

(2) Apple. The two words "love a" in the second line ("I will give my love a house, etc) take the same note but UP not down. This despite the fact that I do have this score.

Just in case you noticed.

Willing fool

I’ve sung Handel’s Did You Not See My Lady? round the house, behind the steering wheel and in the bath for many years. Perhaps I heard it first at school. Here’s John Morgan, baritone, showing how it should done.

Without warning V added it to our repertoire acknowledging I probably knew it already.

I’m a complete fool about singing lessons, readily seduced by life “on the other side”, a slave to new priorities. But this seemingly simple project made me wary. V’s decisions rarely lack reason. Besides, she warned me: “You’ll go crazy trying to sing ‘lady’ properly.”

V was right. Most lines end with an enforced rest so no languishing there. Also “la-” and “-dy” carry the same time value so singing “ladee” is forbidden. But “la-” (pronounced lay) is a long vowel, while “-dy” (pronounced di)  is short and it’s remarkably difficult to balance out the two sounds without chopping off the second abruptly. Further, the general speed is faster than most amateurs realise (a common fault with amateurs) and singing faster helps with “lady” even if it doesn’t resolve things.

Minor problems? Not quite. I now no longer sing casually but from the score. The suspended tadpoles mean something. V points out other non-intuitive matters and I take these aboard. In the final two lines:

Riv’lling the glittering sunshine,
With a glory of golden hair

I’m encouraged to swell (ie, increase then decrease the volume) on “glory”.

I used to enjoy singing the song from memory for myself. But as my corruptions are stripped away and Handel’s intentions become clear, the disciplined experience becomes something else entirely. I’m taking precise instruction from one of the world’s great composers. Doing his bidding. An utterly seduced fool.

Note: Thomas Allen clip was musically defective and has been removed.