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He really ran us ragged tonight, not a typical first rehearsal. Usually he lets out early on the first day -- tonight, went twenty minutes late! Went through both the tough choruses I mentioned in my last post, plus bits of the "Misa Tango." Ow. I may try not to talk much tomorrow. Broke down and went out for dinner afterward. Note to self: later, a journal entry on joining my mom's social circle.
As he so often does, William (conductor of the choir) made a little speech about the meaning of the pieces we're performing and about how, even if you don't believe in it, you need to be an actor and sing it as if you did believe it, in order to give the music power and help it touch the audience (although that last part is my own editorialization, and I don't know if William actually thinks about it that way).
Thing is, the main reason he has to make that particular speech every time around is my mom. She has serious issues with the religious tone of the music we usually do. There's always this sort of struggle twixt her and William, trying to find pieces of music that are interesting enough, challenging enough, accessible enough for our choir to handle, AND that don't totally push my mom's religious buttons. I think that, in some ways, she's more intolerant when it comes to religion than even the majority of non-religious people. This is why sometimes I say that she's not just atheist, she's anti-theist.
But see, it's very difficult, nearly impossible, to find a piece of classical choral music that isn't religious in nature. Hell, it's hard enough to find stuff that isn't specifically Christian -- there is some Jewish stuff in the repertoire, but it's rare. The vast majority of the classical choral repertoire is masses, requiems, Passions, Magnificats, and the like -- works whose text is Biblical or otherwise taken from the liturgy.
Me, I don't have any problem with the music. When I sing masses, I don't have to pretend -- on some level, for the duration of the singing, I do believe. I guess the difference between me and my mom here is that I do acknowledge some sort of spirituality, although nowadays I don't care to give it a name or a face. But since I basically believe that the deities worshipped by all religions of Earth are all versions of the same higher power or force, I don't have a problem with it. Even credo in unum deum, patrem omnipotentem, factorem coeli et terrae doesn't bother me. Sure, call it a pater if that makes you feel better, you know?
Because the music, to me, is the purest expression of that spiritual sentiment, that holy love -- it's through the music that the true connection with your deity of choice is expressed, with all the baggage and connotations of millennia stripped away, all the ugliness and adulteration and corruption that have been injected into it by unenlightened abusers of power. I just get lost in the music, and to me it is holy, even when on the surface it doesn't address or mention a deity that I personally believe in.
What passion cannot music raise or quell? --John Dryden
As he so often does, William (conductor of the choir) made a little speech about the meaning of the pieces we're performing and about how, even if you don't believe in it, you need to be an actor and sing it as if you did believe it, in order to give the music power and help it touch the audience (although that last part is my own editorialization, and I don't know if William actually thinks about it that way).
Thing is, the main reason he has to make that particular speech every time around is my mom. She has serious issues with the religious tone of the music we usually do. There's always this sort of struggle twixt her and William, trying to find pieces of music that are interesting enough, challenging enough, accessible enough for our choir to handle, AND that don't totally push my mom's religious buttons. I think that, in some ways, she's more intolerant when it comes to religion than even the majority of non-religious people. This is why sometimes I say that she's not just atheist, she's anti-theist.
But see, it's very difficult, nearly impossible, to find a piece of classical choral music that isn't religious in nature. Hell, it's hard enough to find stuff that isn't specifically Christian -- there is some Jewish stuff in the repertoire, but it's rare. The vast majority of the classical choral repertoire is masses, requiems, Passions, Magnificats, and the like -- works whose text is Biblical or otherwise taken from the liturgy.
Me, I don't have any problem with the music. When I sing masses, I don't have to pretend -- on some level, for the duration of the singing, I do believe. I guess the difference between me and my mom here is that I do acknowledge some sort of spirituality, although nowadays I don't care to give it a name or a face. But since I basically believe that the deities worshipped by all religions of Earth are all versions of the same higher power or force, I don't have a problem with it. Even credo in unum deum, patrem omnipotentem, factorem coeli et terrae doesn't bother me. Sure, call it a pater if that makes you feel better, you know?
Because the music, to me, is the purest expression of that spiritual sentiment, that holy love -- it's through the music that the true connection with your deity of choice is expressed, with all the baggage and connotations of millennia stripped away, all the ugliness and adulteration and corruption that have been injected into it by unenlightened abusers of power. I just get lost in the music, and to me it is holy, even when on the surface it doesn't address or mention a deity that I personally believe in.
What passion cannot music raise or quell? --John Dryden
