Floret silva nobilis

[kate_schaefer]

Wednesday night, I sight-read Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana," all the way through, with 137 other singers, a fabulous conductor, and a fine, fine accompanist. It was the first of six "Summer Sings" sessions, a sing-along with the Seattle Symphony Chorale.

It was exhilarating to sing again. I haven't sung in a choir for more than two years, and before that it had been a much longer time. I sing alone while I wash the dishes. Glenn and I sing in the car to get through the dull miles. Once a year I sing in a Messiah sing-along. That's not really enough, and it isn't the same as singing with many other people, all of them singing on key, all of them carefully articulating every syllable. It's a religious feeling, or as close to religious as this atheist ever gets.

I've never sung "Carmina Burana" before. It's a piece I scorned unfairly for years because of a bit of teenage musical snobbery. I had a Musical Heritage Society recording of medieval carmina burana; that is, medieval tavern songs in Latin, selected from the same source material that Orff used. I don't think any of the songs on my record were the same ones Orff set, but I went around for years saying that I preferred the original settings to Orff's settings. Years. What an ignorant young snob I was.

"Carmina Burana" is one of the most commonly played classical pieces. I've heard bits of it on the radio, over and over, and references to it in movie music even more, over and over, until it's become nearly as familiar to me as things I've listened to on purpose. I didn't listen to it carefully and on purpose until last summer, when I heard the Seattle Symphony perform it, and it went from being a semi-familiar piece I didn't much care for to an exciting piece that sets the blood racing.

Wednesday, it moved from being an exciting piece I've heard to being a piece that I had inhabited. I know a lot of music from listening to it carefully and even more music from listening to it casually; necessarily I don't know any of the music I've just listened to the way I know the music I've sung, the music I've lived inside. One read-through of a piece doesn't make it mine the way a performance of it would, but this read-through was more impressive than any other read-through I've ever done.

Part of the excitement was the music itself, and part of it was going from hoping that I'd be able to keep up with the rest to knowing that I'd be able to keep up. Every singer there was either a member of the Seattle Symphony Chorale or thought that he or she could keep up with the Seattle Symphony Chorale. Everyone singing around me was correct in that self-assessment. Occasionally the woman next to me sang a line from the second alto part rather than the first alto part, and occasionally I sang a line from the second soprano part rather than the first alto part, but I wasn't hearing flat altos and excessively shrill sopranos and massive uncertainty among the basses and strain among the tenors (well, maybe one section of shrill sopranos, but it wasn't appalling). The errors were the errors of good singers with strong musical skills rather than the errors of okay singers with decent musical skills.

Afterward, my friend Grace and I talked about it. Grace has been a member of the Chorale for a year, and that performance of "Carmina Burana" last summer was her first performance with the Symphony. She said that the first time she'd sung it, she hadn't known it very well, not compared to other members of the Chorale who had sung it many times, but that the musical rightness of the way that each section unfolds – the way that Orff's notes are always the notes that have to follow the notes that came before, the chords are always the chords that ought to be there – makes it easy to sing. This is not to say that the piece is facile. The entire piece may be implicit in that first attention-getting note, but only because it already exists, only because Orff wrote it and developed it from those implications, which only he could hear in the 1930s.

Ah, I am not being clear here. There is a satisfying rightness to music which simultaneously fits in with the entire tradition of music behind it and does something new, and that is what "Carmina Burana" feels like from the inside. Orff may never have had another original idea in his composing life; I don't know, since I'm not acquainted with the rest of his oeuvre. There may be hidden gems there, but I suspect that in general we don't hear the rest because the rest simply doesn't come up to this standard. The rest doesn't need to come up to this standard. This one piece is enough.

Next Wednesday: Prokoviev's "Alexander Nevsky". "Summer Sings" is open to anybody who shows up with $8, and I think it's well worth it if you're a good singer with solid sight-reading skills. Nothing too easy in this schedule: http://www.seattlesymphony.org/symphony/meet/chorale/summer.aspx

Comments

[tamiam.livejournal.com]

Wow, is all I can say, just wow! How could I know you all these years and not know you could sight read well enough to sing stuff like this? I'm impressed. I knew you had a good, no, beautiful, voice when we sang little bits of peace songs during the anti-war vigil (now many years ago). I still remember Dona Nobis Pacem, and how perfect that was for a moment. (I wish singing could stop wars.) This is great. I'd like to come hear you sometime. My classical phase went more toward first chair first clarinet, and singing goes more towards rock and roll, but I love listening to it. (I used to be an alto.) (Probably still am.) Cool.