Lift up your voices

Until about my fifteenth birthday, I could sing soprano.

I suppose it's not so amazing that I could sing soprano as it is that I could sing.  In my first year or so of piano lessons, I was required to count as I played -- "one-and two-and three-it-is-a four-and."  I couldn't keep myself from singing the count, at a very high pitch, along with the music.  My teacher looked pained, as though he had a splitting headache.  He warned me that I would ruin my voice.

He was right.  But not until I turned 15.

Within a few months, not only did my voice deepen, but my range dropped to about half an octave.  Where it has remained to this very day.  Now, when forced into group singing, I chant the words in a monotone, as softly as possible, hoping to annoy my neighbors as little as possible.

I so ruminate over the sad history of my voice, because I've been recalling how much I enjoyed singing at school concerts at this time of year when I was in fifth and sixth grades.  We were divided, as I recall, into soprano, second soprano, and alto.  Participation in these concerts was nothing we auditioned for.  We all sang, our entire class, canaries and crows alike, both in school assemblies and in a public performance for the entertainment and joy of our proud parents. 

I enjoyed every song we sang, and I don't recall ever worrying about staying in tune.  (What I felt and what the chorus director might have felt may have differed, of course.)  By seventh grade, however, "chorus" was a separate class composed of kids with a special talent for -- or at least interest in -- singing, and my days of public warbling were over.  We non-chorus and non-orchestra dolts continued to have "general music" classes through eighth grade, in which we sang together for our own amusement, but we were not allowed to threaten outside audiences with our efforts.

Our fifth and sixth grade Christmas concerts included both secular and sacred seasonal songs.  By "sacred," I certainly don't mean Bach and Handel, but traditional carols, of a sort familiar even in a logging town.  And by secular, I mean "Rudolph" and Jolly Old Saint Nicholas."  No one ever distinguished between the two categories.  We kids certainly didn't.  The songs were all just "Christmas music." 

Now, of course, I doubt whether public schools are permitted to offer explicitly "Christmas" concerts.  A quick Yahoo search doesn't result in any such concerts, at least as presented to the general public, by the Seattle public schools.  The far greater religious diversity of today's population probably makes the offering of any such concert problematic.

But Christmas choral music by kids lives on, at a very high quality, in the Northwest Boys Choir, which offers a "Festival of Carols and Lessons" each year at this time.  Performances are given at a number of area churches, leading up to a couple of performances at St. Mark's Cathedral, and, finally, at Benaroya Hall downtown.  I haven't attended this year, but have occasionally in years past.  The experience is breathtaking, and only faintly similar to my fondest memories of our fifth and sixth grade concerts.

The "Festival" is based on Anglican services at King's College, Cambridge.  Boys alternate giving seasonal readings from scripture, and singing traditional English carols.  As I recall, the service takes place in a darkened church or auditorium, lit by candles.  Attending the performance is an excellent way to get into the "Christmas spirit," and I can't understand why I haven't gone this year.

Most of us will never possess as adults the purity of tone and range of pitch we had when we were 12 or 13, but the "Festival" gives us a chance to relive that experience vicariously, as well as to appreciate listening, as adults, to beautiful seasonal music sung to very high standards.