Connections: Spreading Joy
According to a 2011 report from Chorus America, an organization that promotes and supports choral singing, 42.6 million people sing in more than 270,000 choruses across the nation. The organization admitted that there was something a bit wonky about those figures: If the survey were correct, it would mean an extraordinary average of more than 157 people per singing group — but, still, it said emphatically that more Americans sing in organized groups “than engage in football, baseball, tennis, even Greco-Roman wrestling.” (Fantasy football, they conceded, has been estimated to attract an amazing 27 million participants.)
As a member of the Choral Society of the Hamptons, I am delighted to be part of such a large musical community. Two performances of our annual holiday concert were presented at the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church on Sunday, which allows me to write this week about the joy many of us take in choral singing in general and, in specific, the pleasure of this concert of music by Bach and Mendelssohn. (I avoided using this space to tout the concert beforehand, knowing that it would have its own advance publicity and not wanting to become boring on the subject. But today, with a laudatory review in a prominent place in our arts section, I am home free to gush.)
A few weeks ago, Carissa Katz, The Star’s managing editor, had gotten me thinking about my own early singing experiences. My mother, I told her, realized by the time I turned 13 that I wasn’t going to be another Shirley Temple, and decided instead that I should take voice ed instead that I should take voice lessons. We would ride a bus from Bayonne, N.J., to Journal Square in Jersey City once a week, and it was there that I was introduced to beautiful soprano arias. I can remember to this day how one, an aria from Handel’s opera “Rinaldo,” began: The words are “Lascia ch’io pianga / mia cruda sorte” (let me weep / my cruel fate).
I didn’t have the kind of life experience necessary for the sad emotions expressed in the aria, but, looking back, I apparently had an okay voice (as well as a precocious taste for tragic melodies). “Rinaldo” is not very well known, but anyone interested can find the aria, of course, on YouTube. It’s sad and lovely.
As the years went on, I sang at high school assemblies, although I can’t remember what the songs may have been, and I soon became enamored of the sound of blended voices. I was a member of the New Jersey All State and Rutgers University choruses and, later, as a young woman in New York City, of such prestigious groups as the Dessoff Choir. When I came to East Hampton I am ashamed to say I was rather snotty about the prospect of joining the chorus here; but then I actually joined and quickly noticed that Dinwiddie Smith, who had been in a group I sang with at the Church of the Heavenly Rest on Fifth Avenue, was a member. If it was good enough for him, it was good enough for me.
That was a long time ago and, except for a period in the 1980s when I gave music up entirely, I’ve been at it ever since. I’ve grown to have great respect for our not-so-small-town chorus and everyone who makes an effort to hold it to a high standard.
This week, Carissa, who attended Sunday’s concert with her husband and 4 and 6-year-old children, sent me an email. I hope she doesn’t mind my sharing it. “Bravo! We all loved it,” it read. “When the chorus first sang, it was so beautiful it gave me chills. Well done to all involved. It was just lovely.” I like to think this is one of the main reasons choral singing is so popular in America: See how amply we are rewarded?