Of Wishing and Singing

If I were to wish for anything (well, other than love, marriage, lifelong friendship, eternal life, and all that other really important stuff), I would wish for a better voice.

It's not that my singing voice is all that bad. I've always loved to sing, whether it was singing in Primary or sacramenet meeting, or belting out "Part of Your World" or "Seize the Day" on afternoons when I just happened to be left alone in the house. When I was young, I was intrigued to hear my mother singing something other than the melody when we sang the hymns at church, and I learned to pick out the alto line at a fairly young age. I always shied away from choirs because I didn't consider myself a talented singer, and because I was a pianist, not a vocalist. But after a brief stint at accompanying my ward choir for their Christmas production my senior year of high school, I stuck around to sing and learned that even if I didn't have a beautiful solo voice, I could still contribute to the choir with my ability to read music and to pick out a tune with relative ease. It was exciting to me, and I was one of only a handful of ward choir members who showed up faithfully not only for our Sunday afternoon rehearsals, but for our Wednesday evening practices as well.

At BYU I learned to love choir concerts. At the time I was all about the big, tear-jerking orchestral Mack Wilberg numbers, like "Come Thou Fount" and "Praise to the Lord," and I bought the combined choir Thanksgiving CD and listened to it every Sunday. At the beginning of my sophomore year one of my roommates joined the non-audition University Chorale, and I thought it sounded like fun - I could sing in a choir every other day without worrying about the quality of my voice. I signed up the following semester, and last night I sang in my tenth University Chorale concert.

Ten semesters of University Chorale taught me more about singing than I ever expected to learn. I guess when I started I thought it would be little more than a glorified church choir. The expectations, however, were much higher; it was hard work, and required my full concentration, and I was surprised how quickly I became emotionally invested in the songs and in the success of the choir. I learned about space and resonance and vowels and diction and dynamics and feeling, and I have not listened to choir music in the same way since. I still love the Mack Wilberg pieces (and have been enjoying Music and the Spoken Word even more osince they began singing with the Orchestra at Temple Square a few months ago). But I am now most enthralled by pieces performed a capella by smaller groups, like University Singers - the pieces I once thought were the strange and slightly boring ones that filled the space before the big, bold, multi-choir grand finale.

I think it's because I better appreciate what goes into such pieces, because I now hear more when I listen to them. Every once in awhile I will pull out the first Singers CD I ever bought (I now have four) and sit on my bed with my eyes closed and listen to "When David Heard that Absalom Was Slain," and it can still bring me to tears.

And there is nothing I know that can compare to the spirit that I have often felt during concerts, when the spirit and the words and the music combine with the testimonies of the composer, the conductor, dozens of individual choir members, and even the entire audience. One of the things that makes me saddest as I think about leaving Provo is that I am about to leave the only place I have ever been able to have that experience and to share that experience. There will be no University Chorale to sing in at the University of Michigan. There won't even be University Singers or combined choir concerts to attend several times a year. I feel as though a hugely important part of my life is about to be lost forever.

My dream for several years now has been to sing in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Sometimes I think this is a silly dream, because it's not something I can ever hope to accomplish. I just don't have the voice for it, and I don't think I ever will. But there are few things I love more than singing in a choir - a real choir. Everything about it - taking responsibility for my own voice, following the conductor, becoming unified with the other choir members, learning new pieces, sight singing, singing by memory and letting myself feel the music and the words. If I knew that I could take voice lessons for the four or five years that I was away getting my PhD and improve my voice enough to audition for the Tabernacle Choir, I would almost get a job at BYU or some other university in Utah just for the sake of singing.

And part of me wonders if I actually could. I have been accompanying voice lessons at a private voice studio run by my voice teacher last term and his wife, and as I listen to the girls - some teenagers, some closer to my age - from week to week and can hear the improvement in voices that initially sounded weak and frightened, I wonder what would happen to my voice were I to really dedicate myself to improving it. I have seen a change in the last several years - the quiet, timid, whispery public singing voice I began with has become stronger after so many semesters of singing in a choir, the sound has become clearer, more open, more easily controlled. I can't do vibrato yet, but after just six weeks of voice lessons (and admittedly not much practice time since I was in the throes of my thesis) during spring term, I can feel the "wobble" every once in awhile, and can almost control when it comes in.

If only I had time. There are so many things I would do if I didn't have so many responsibilities (like school) - I would take music lessons and learn Russian and train for more marathons and learn to really cook and read lots of books (fiction and nonfiction) and become a better swimmer and hike and spend more time with people.

And I would definitely sing.