I had a date with Sibelius tonight! No, I don’t mean the famous Finnish composer of “Finlandia” and “Swan of Tuonela.” (That would have been quite a trick, since he died in 1957.) No, the date was actually with a neat computer program called Sibelius which- among other things- is set up to transcribe the music of whatever you play on the attached keyboard. It’s an absolute godsend for any composer who had better things to do than sit hunched over a piece of manuscript paper for hours on end – which is what is involved if you are interested in writing out the piano accompaniment for even a fairly brief piece of music. (SO many dots!) I was shown this computer program a few years ago and had my curiosity piqued, to say the least- heck, it seemed like something right out of The Jetsons- but had never managed to give it so much as a second look.
Then a few days ago, I got a very sweet invitation from a former voice student of mine named Paul Marchese, who recently moved to Kenosha to take a job with the school district. Paul was a private voice student at Carthage back in the late 90’s who also sang under my direction in the Chamber Singers. In the years since, Paul and I have enjoyed some very fun collaborations as he has brought me in to work with various high school choirs he has directed to sing various pieces of mine – and repeatedly over the years, Paul has said that he was bound and determined to help me get some of my choral compositions properly written down and polished and ready to submit for possible publication. And since moving to Kenosha late this summer, he decided that he would follow through on this serious promise once and for all. Hence, his invitation for me to come over to his house so he could help me get one of my piano accompaniments transcribed with his Sibelius program.
And that’s what we did. . . and it was a ball! The computer program itself is a marvel- but even more amazing is Paul himself. I sat there watching his fingers fly over his computer keyboard as we made one alteration after another, with him effecting the changes almost as quickly as I could request them. I was awestruck- and more than that, very humbled and grateful that Paul would take an evening away from his wife and two kids to do this for me. And it was especially appropriate that we worked on my arrangement of “amazing grace” since Paul was part of the chamber singers group which sang this arrangement for its very very first performance anywhere all those years ago. (Since then, it has been sung by Caritas, the Senior Choir at Holy Communion, the top choir at Tremper High School, the Carthage Choir, and the Weston Noble Alumni Choir. But it started with the Chamber Singers all those years ago.) I remember that Paul was part of that premiere because when we got done with our performance, which was for morning chapel, Paul spoke up quite unexpectedly and said “ladies and gentlemen, that arrangement we just sang is by our director, Mr. Greg Berg.” He had noticed that my name wasn’t in the bulletin and he was determined to make sure that people knew that the arrangement was mine. I was really touched – and tonight I was touched all over again by Paul’s interest and encouragement. It’s one thing to say that you admire someone or something they’ve done- but it’s quite another matter to do something tangible to prove it. It’s the difference between saying “I hope this gets published someday” – and saying “Come over Monday night and I’ll help you transcribe Amazing Grace. It’ll be fun!” And he was right. It was! But even better than seeing this dazzling computer program in action – or even better than accomplishing so much of our specific task – was the incomparably sweet feeling of Being Loved and of having a friend/ colleague take my arrangement lovingly in hand and transcribe it with such consummate skill and care. That’s a whole lot more exciting to me than meeting the real Jean Sibelius would ever be!
pictured above: Paul’s fingers in action.