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Music kerfluffles
Dec. 31st, 2006 02:01 pmThis morning I was scheduled to sing the Assistant Minister part for the 8 am service. I'd been scheduled for Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve for quite a long time - before I knew how rough this pregnancy was going to be on me. I had last sung back in October, and the Christmas Eve services got collapsed to 1 10 am service, and the 11 am person took the singing role.
Before I get further into the story of what happened today, let me give a little background information. The Asst. Minister has a singing part right at the beginning of the service, the Kyrie, where it's sing-and-response, then after that sings the first part of a hymn that everyone joins in for the rest. The words for the sing-and-response are always the same, and the hymn is one of two possibilities, "Glory to God" or "This is the Feast of Victory", depending on the Sunday. The music, however, changes. There are three different settings, different sets of tunes, that these are sung to. (This also affects the tunes for stuff later in the service - the offertory hymn, the Holy Holy Holy after the Great Thanksgiving, and the Agnus Dei just before communion - but I don't have to solo those.)
We'd been doing setting 3 recently, which is the hardest, and I'd never sung that as A.M. before. Setting 1 is very simple, and is the one that was up the first few times I did the A.M. role. My favorite is setting 2 - that's the one that feels like the "right" one to me, although to do the A.M. part I have to drop down an octave and sing it in the tenor range - that's what I was doing back in October, that got our music director coming up to me later and saying "you're a tenor!" Yeah, I've found I do much better singing most of the hymns an octave down.
At the Christmas Eve services, I'd noticed that we weren't singing setting 3 anymore - so I went up to Pastor Phil after service and asked him precisely what I'd be singing this Sunday. He told me setting one, and the "Glory to God" hymn. Okay, fine. So that was what I practiced yesterday. Setting one, no problem, sing it as written, and the Glory to God intro doesn't require anything musically difficult.
(By the way, one of the reasons I'm able to practice all this is that my mother,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bkseiver, has been an organist at various churches, including some of the Lutheran ones I was brought up on. She has since kindly given me both the organist's version of the green Lutheran hymnal, and more precious, the organist's edition of the Liturgy book. A precious book to me indeed.)
So this morning I headed off early to church, not as early as I maybe should have, but early. I said hi to Pastor Phil and said I was going off to the choir room to wake up my voice. I got in there, said hi to Victor, and sat down at the piano to practice and warm up, started singing the scale of the key of F, which is what setting 1 starts in, and then started practicing it. The Kyrie in setting 1 is dead easy, it starts C-D-F and then you stay on F-F-F-F-F then D then F. And the rest of the lines are F-F-F-F-F-D-F. So far fine, and then I launch off the last Amen which ends on G into Glory to God, which starts on G. No problem.
Problem. Victor stops me and tells me, no, we're doing This is the Feast instead of Glory to God. Oh no. I'm thinking of T.i.t.F. in setting 2 at first, and thinking I'm going to have to drop that an octave - and Victor points out, no, it's T.i.t.F. in setting ONE. Which I've never sung before. I don't even remember us doing it in that setting - I think usually while we're in setting 1 we've been singing Glory to God. Victor points out to me that in setting 1, I don't sing that first line alone, the whole congregation sings it - but I think, does the congregation realize that? They're used to the A.M. singing the first line alone, so I bet I will be. So I spend a bit of time at the piano frantically punching out that first line, in which not only the melody but the rhythm is different from what I'm used to. Oh, and it's in the key of D, not F major. It's pushing at the top of my range, too. Then I walk quickly back to the robing closet, carrying the liturgy book and softly singing that first line over and over.
I get to the closet, say hi to Pastor Phil, mention I've warmed up, and I'm about to start robing when he says something about yep, setting 2 and This is the Feast. What? Setting TWO? We grab the bulletin and look, and sure enough, from the music in there for the Kyrie responses it's clearly setting two. Now, setting two is my favorite, but still, I've just warmed up for setting 1. Setting 2 I have to drop down an octave, and the Kyrie is in the key of C, although at least This is the Feast is still in D, albeit a different melody. Pastor Phil offers to have me just speak the lines instead of singing them, but I really don't want to do that, and confirm that I still have a few minutes and can scurry back to the choir room to reset myself. I ask Tara, our intern, to go up to Victor and make sure he's seen that we're on setting 2, and tell him I need the starter note one octave down, please - they'll play the first note or three softly just before we start. I scurry back, practice frantically, scurry back up front (and these days, scurrying leaves me out of breath! Which is why I asked Tara to go upstairs to the choir loft rather than doing it myself), and robe up.
At this point I'm probably lucky to know which way is UP. I'm also realizing uncomfortably that before putting on the heavy robes, I should probably have slipped off the very warm wool socks and just put my clogs back on over bare feet. (Sigh, yes, I'm reduced to wearing clogs to church. They're *nice* clogs... my other shoes are hurting too much right now.)
So we get to the start of the kyrie - I'm expecting a singleton note to start on, an A below C - and he played a sequence of three, I'm honestly not sure which. I was totally flubbing the first line, hunting for the right note. GAH! By the second line, I had it much better, and I think from the third on I was right on the correct notes. But still, weep! After the hymn, as we sat down to hear the readings, Pastor Phil whispered "good recovery!" Sigh.
I'd also run into the problem that because of all the music kerfluffle, I hadn't gotten up front to read through the prayers that the A.M. reads, which I generally do ahead of time so I make sure there's no weird phrasing to verbally trip me up. Now, I'm good at reading out loud, even totally cold - but I managed to get a good look at it before the readings, and I could see that in the part where I'm reading names of people we're praying for with illnesses, one of the names was right under where the three-hole punch had gone. I can interpolate a lot from context, but not a name. So I'd whispered to Pastor Phil that I couldn't read it, and he'd managed to get a look at it during the hymn after the sermon and tell me the correct name.
To make things worse - I've been needing to slip out to the bathroom in the middle of the service these days. Maybe I should have gone during the sermon, but I like listening to the sermon. So I slipped out during the Peace, and had the offertory as my time period. Unfortunately, I was wearing my maternity overalls under the robe - one of the few comfortable decent things I have I can wear right now - and you have to totally derobe to go to the bathroom. Which might have been okay - except the altar mike isn't working right now, so they had us wearing the little portable mikes, that go in your pocket and clip to the collar of the robe, and you just de-mute them when you get to your part. So afterwards I'm frantically throwing the robe back on, and the clip for the mike fell off, and I'm desperately getting all this together fast - and as a result, I was discreetly slipping back up the side aisle of the church and through the sacristy just as it was time for the A.M. to read the prayer after the offertory canticle. Pastor Phil simply read it. I felt bad about that, though.
I got through the rest of the service reasonably well. I did find that the procession out, singing the hymn (we got a nice highly-singable one, Go Tell it on the Mountain) and walking, was enough to put me out of breath again. As it was, the lector well outpaced me, although I think I was doing a reasonable dignified pace. A last few gathered breaths so I could do the final A.M. line at the back, and I was done.
I'd already decided this better be the last time I did this role until well post-baby, but man, this certainly clinched it. This was way more trouble than I'd expected!
Before I get further into the story of what happened today, let me give a little background information. The Asst. Minister has a singing part right at the beginning of the service, the Kyrie, where it's sing-and-response, then after that sings the first part of a hymn that everyone joins in for the rest. The words for the sing-and-response are always the same, and the hymn is one of two possibilities, "Glory to God" or "This is the Feast of Victory", depending on the Sunday. The music, however, changes. There are three different settings, different sets of tunes, that these are sung to. (This also affects the tunes for stuff later in the service - the offertory hymn, the Holy Holy Holy after the Great Thanksgiving, and the Agnus Dei just before communion - but I don't have to solo those.)
We'd been doing setting 3 recently, which is the hardest, and I'd never sung that as A.M. before. Setting 1 is very simple, and is the one that was up the first few times I did the A.M. role. My favorite is setting 2 - that's the one that feels like the "right" one to me, although to do the A.M. part I have to drop down an octave and sing it in the tenor range - that's what I was doing back in October, that got our music director coming up to me later and saying "you're a tenor!" Yeah, I've found I do much better singing most of the hymns an octave down.
At the Christmas Eve services, I'd noticed that we weren't singing setting 3 anymore - so I went up to Pastor Phil after service and asked him precisely what I'd be singing this Sunday. He told me setting one, and the "Glory to God" hymn. Okay, fine. So that was what I practiced yesterday. Setting one, no problem, sing it as written, and the Glory to God intro doesn't require anything musically difficult.
(By the way, one of the reasons I'm able to practice all this is that my mother,
bkseiver, has been an organist at various churches, including some of the Lutheran ones I was brought up on. She has since kindly given me both the organist's version of the green Lutheran hymnal, and more precious, the organist's edition of the Liturgy book. A precious book to me indeed.)So this morning I headed off early to church, not as early as I maybe should have, but early. I said hi to Pastor Phil and said I was going off to the choir room to wake up my voice. I got in there, said hi to Victor, and sat down at the piano to practice and warm up, started singing the scale of the key of F, which is what setting 1 starts in, and then started practicing it. The Kyrie in setting 1 is dead easy, it starts C-D-F and then you stay on F-F-F-F-F then D then F. And the rest of the lines are F-F-F-F-F-D-F. So far fine, and then I launch off the last Amen which ends on G into Glory to God, which starts on G. No problem.
Problem. Victor stops me and tells me, no, we're doing This is the Feast instead of Glory to God. Oh no. I'm thinking of T.i.t.F. in setting 2 at first, and thinking I'm going to have to drop that an octave - and Victor points out, no, it's T.i.t.F. in setting ONE. Which I've never sung before. I don't even remember us doing it in that setting - I think usually while we're in setting 1 we've been singing Glory to God. Victor points out to me that in setting 1, I don't sing that first line alone, the whole congregation sings it - but I think, does the congregation realize that? They're used to the A.M. singing the first line alone, so I bet I will be. So I spend a bit of time at the piano frantically punching out that first line, in which not only the melody but the rhythm is different from what I'm used to. Oh, and it's in the key of D, not F major. It's pushing at the top of my range, too. Then I walk quickly back to the robing closet, carrying the liturgy book and softly singing that first line over and over.
I get to the closet, say hi to Pastor Phil, mention I've warmed up, and I'm about to start robing when he says something about yep, setting 2 and This is the Feast. What? Setting TWO? We grab the bulletin and look, and sure enough, from the music in there for the Kyrie responses it's clearly setting two. Now, setting two is my favorite, but still, I've just warmed up for setting 1. Setting 2 I have to drop down an octave, and the Kyrie is in the key of C, although at least This is the Feast is still in D, albeit a different melody. Pastor Phil offers to have me just speak the lines instead of singing them, but I really don't want to do that, and confirm that I still have a few minutes and can scurry back to the choir room to reset myself. I ask Tara, our intern, to go up to Victor and make sure he's seen that we're on setting 2, and tell him I need the starter note one octave down, please - they'll play the first note or three softly just before we start. I scurry back, practice frantically, scurry back up front (and these days, scurrying leaves me out of breath! Which is why I asked Tara to go upstairs to the choir loft rather than doing it myself), and robe up.
At this point I'm probably lucky to know which way is UP. I'm also realizing uncomfortably that before putting on the heavy robes, I should probably have slipped off the very warm wool socks and just put my clogs back on over bare feet. (Sigh, yes, I'm reduced to wearing clogs to church. They're *nice* clogs... my other shoes are hurting too much right now.)
So we get to the start of the kyrie - I'm expecting a singleton note to start on, an A below C - and he played a sequence of three, I'm honestly not sure which. I was totally flubbing the first line, hunting for the right note. GAH! By the second line, I had it much better, and I think from the third on I was right on the correct notes. But still, weep! After the hymn, as we sat down to hear the readings, Pastor Phil whispered "good recovery!" Sigh.
I'd also run into the problem that because of all the music kerfluffle, I hadn't gotten up front to read through the prayers that the A.M. reads, which I generally do ahead of time so I make sure there's no weird phrasing to verbally trip me up. Now, I'm good at reading out loud, even totally cold - but I managed to get a good look at it before the readings, and I could see that in the part where I'm reading names of people we're praying for with illnesses, one of the names was right under where the three-hole punch had gone. I can interpolate a lot from context, but not a name. So I'd whispered to Pastor Phil that I couldn't read it, and he'd managed to get a look at it during the hymn after the sermon and tell me the correct name.
To make things worse - I've been needing to slip out to the bathroom in the middle of the service these days. Maybe I should have gone during the sermon, but I like listening to the sermon. So I slipped out during the Peace, and had the offertory as my time period. Unfortunately, I was wearing my maternity overalls under the robe - one of the few comfortable decent things I have I can wear right now - and you have to totally derobe to go to the bathroom. Which might have been okay - except the altar mike isn't working right now, so they had us wearing the little portable mikes, that go in your pocket and clip to the collar of the robe, and you just de-mute them when you get to your part. So afterwards I'm frantically throwing the robe back on, and the clip for the mike fell off, and I'm desperately getting all this together fast - and as a result, I was discreetly slipping back up the side aisle of the church and through the sacristy just as it was time for the A.M. to read the prayer after the offertory canticle. Pastor Phil simply read it. I felt bad about that, though.
I got through the rest of the service reasonably well. I did find that the procession out, singing the hymn (we got a nice highly-singable one, Go Tell it on the Mountain) and walking, was enough to put me out of breath again. As it was, the lector well outpaced me, although I think I was doing a reasonable dignified pace. A last few gathered breaths so I could do the final A.M. line at the back, and I was done.
I'd already decided this better be the last time I did this role until well post-baby, but man, this certainly clinched it. This was way more trouble than I'd expected!
