Choir Practice

The choirmaster, a bald, scarecrow figure of a man with a perpetual frown, rapped his baton sharply and the choir came to order. Again, he instructed, From the top.

We had been rehearsing for more than two hours and were hot, tired, and hungry but still anxious to please. Mr. Branton was a hard taskmaster, more than willing to call out a choir member for the smallest infraction, demanding the best we had to offer at every service, and never compromising for anything less than perfect four part harmony. Most of us had begun with him in the children's choir and most would go on to the adult choir - but for now we were the youth choir - too good for the old standard hymns but nowhere near good enough for The Messiah.

Jason, he barked loudly at the tenor section, Stop slouching! Mark, watch me not the clock! Sean, fix your collar! He paced back and forth in front of us, our fragile, impatient music director, not at all interested in winning the hearts of his choir but resolutely determined to mold our vocal chords. Anne, hands at your side! Christine, don't fidget! And Maryanne, if you're chewing gum again, swallow it right now! The baton cracked like a whip with every reprimand. Again, he ordered with a sweeping glare at all of us, And remember this is music for the glory of God so I want to see some smiles and rejoicing or I'll keep you all night, damn it! At this small linguistic irony, several of the older choir members laughed out loud and he gave us a reluctant, wry smile before tapping the baton on the podium. Okay, he relented, One last time - for the glory of God, remember.

He was, we thought, a hard man, overbearing and impossible to please, humorless and distant, but passionate about music. We worked hard for his approval, praise being out of the question, and any small break in the intense rehearsals was welcome.

If we'd looked a little closer or been a little more interested, we would have discovered another side to our choirmaster, a side he didn't talk about. None of us knew that his wife had been an opera singer or that she and his three daughters had all been killed in a tragic house fire while he was in rehearsal. We didn't know of his subsequent breakdown and the years spent in therapy, nor of the drinking and the guilt. Little by slow, he had been coaxed back to life through music, it had been his salvation and had become his strength - he wanted it to become ours.

I was never to sing in the adult choir - life and leaving home intervened and there was no time for church - but I did learn a thing or two about looking beneath the surface of people and discovering their inner workings. We all deserve a closer look.