Earning My Stripes: First Semester as a Music Minor: #4

On Tuesday, October eighteenth in the year of our Lord two thousand and eleven........Trinity Choir sang. Oooh, exciting. Well actually, to be more specific and to explain why this not-particularly-shocking fact is significant, this date is the date on which Trinity University put on its 2011 fall choral concert.

Trinity Choir (22 men, 20 women) started off, followed by the Chamber Singers (12 men, 12 women, all from Trinity Choir) and then by the Women's Choir, Voix d'Esprit (34 women). Trinity Choir opened the concert in mixed formation with a German a capella song by Schumann - "Und Ob Ich Schon Wanderte Im Finstren Thal," continued with "Super Flumina Babylonis," moved to sections and finished the Trinity Choir portion of the concert with the Estonian segakoorile by Tormis and "A Dream Within A Dream" by Debra Scroggins.

I like standing in mixed formation (which is basically when everyone kind of just roams around and finds a spot among singers of different voice parts, and then Dr. Seighman moves a few people around to get the sound he wants, and then that is our set "mixed formation") because I can hear the other voice parts around me. I stood at the stage right end of the second row, with a Bass 2 (who also happened to be my very good friend Josh) behind me, an Alto 1 (who also happened to be my lovely suitemate Amanda Leard) in front of me, and a Tenor 2 (whose name I unfortunately cannot remember) to my left. So I was surrounded by lovely sound from all different voice types, and since I was the only Soprano 2 in the near vicinity, I could hear myself sing and check to make sure I was singing the right pitches, counting correctly, and being musical. However, this freedom can be detrimental when singing songs like "Super Flumina Babylonis," which sounds like a medieval chant and has very, very difficult entrances for each section. We always find it difficult to stand mixed when singing that song, because we need to hear each other in our sections and feel the beat and rhythm of the piece together. However, we pulled it off fairly successfully, and right after it, we moved to stand in our sections, which look something like this:
Audience
Alto 2 Soprano 1
Alto 1 Soprano 2
Tenor 1 Bass 1
Tenor 2 Bass 2

We sang the Tormis (very well, I might add), and then finished with our favorite piece ever, "A Dream Within A Dream." *insert sarcasm here.*We can't stand the song. It's pretty....and it's gorgeous to listen to....but singing it.is.impossible. And we didn't even sing the whole thing during warmup before the concert. It was not the best performance of that song we've ever done, but at least it wasn't horrible. We were all glad when we finished it, and we got to go sit in the back pews and listen to the Chamber Singers, and then the women's choir, sing their pieces. They all did a wonderful job, and there were several solos in the women's songs that were sung quite well.

Overall it was a nice evening, and even though I wore a half-velvet, half-garbage-sack-plastic dress for at least three hours, I was pleased with my first college choir concert. I look forward to many more.