Yesterday’s Carthage Choir rehearsal was memorable on several levels. I arrive most days maybe three minutes early, and Mr. Noble is ALWAYS there already. But not yesterday. There was no sign of him at 3:40…3:43… 3:45…
3:47….3:50…. Finally, I decided that I should go ahead and vocalize the choir, fully expecting that Mr. Noble would walk through the door any second. But no- there was no sign of him. So I had them take out “Crucifixus” by Antonio Lotti and we rehearsed a couple of trouble spots, and all the while I’m thinking to myself “what if something has happened to Mr. Noble?” Then a couple minutes after 4, Peter Dennee walked in the room, carrying some music. I asked him if he had any idea where Mr. Noble was, and he said ‘Didn’t he talk to you?” It turns out that Mr. Noble had to be gone and he was going to talk with me about taking the rehearsal- but he never said a word to me.
Then it was time for the second big surprise of the day- the pile of music which Peter was carrying was my arrangement of “Amazing Grace” – and in a nicely crafted computer generated score rather than my homemade manuscript – complete with a decorative cover. Mr. Noble heard my arrangement at homecoming last fall and told me afterwards that he wanted the Carthage Choir to sing it – but that’s the last I had heard of it and I was starting to think that perhaps he had changed his mind. But no, he obviously hadn’t changed his mind . . . and apparently the plan (which no one remembered to tell me about) was for me to introduce my arrangement to the choir at yesterday’s rehearsal.
I can’t say that it was a rehearsal to be enshrined in the Choral Directors Hall of Fame. In the beginning I was too distracted with worry about where Mr. Noble was – and then when it came time for Amazing Grace, I was a little bit rattled and obviously had no chance to clear my head and formulate a battle plan. If I’d had a chance to think things through, I would have said a few words about when I made the arrangement – and maybe would have told the story of how moving it was for the Carthage Choir to sing it down in Carthage, IL when we dedicated our performance of it to the memory of a saintly old woman – a true pillar of that congregation – who had just died the night before the concert. I could have told that story, but instead I just plunged into the piece without any touchy feely talking about it at all – and maybe that was just as well. When I start gabbing, I usually don’t know how to stop.
Anyway, they did well with it – and I hope they liked it. One baritone made a point of coming up to me afterwards to say how much he liked my arrangement, which really made my day. Even after all I’ve done, I am still insecure enough that I find myself really hungry for affirmation= especially from college students who typically are not interested in making up compliments which they don’t really mean. So when a college student compliments you, it’s something you can take to the bank !
So my Amazing Grace arrangement is on the Carthage Choir spring tour program – and I’m still pinching myself.