When I wrote to you last month, I hadn’t processed the full magnitude of my grief over the loss of choral singing due to the COVID-19 crisis. We’d already been working from home for a week. I was holding choir rehearsals over Zoom, insisting that my students sing and rehearse with the recordings I played from my computer.
On one particular day between classes, I noticed a friend had tagged me in a video posted on Facebook of the LA Master Chorale, singing Eric Whitacre’s “i carry your heart” at Disney Hall in 2016. Another friend commented sweetly that they had spotted me in the video. Until that point, I had been avoiding videos of virtual choirs, A-cappella app projects and footage of past performances. But in a moment of vanity, I thought, “I should watch it since I’m in it. I wonder what I looked like in 2016? Let me see how much less visible my gray hair was back then.” So I clicked. Then time stopped.
I dissolved at the sight and sound of us singing “i carry your heart.” I melted into tears.
The way I responded was kinda like that scene in Disney’s Ratatouille, when, with the first bite of this masterful dish, the food critic is dramatically transported back to childhood, savoring a delicious meal prepared with extraordinary care and skill by someone they loved and who loved him.
Shatteringly, I thought of Orlando di Lasso’s Lagrime di San Pietro, #10 “Come falda di neve.” In this video excerpt from our performance in 2016 (I’m on the back row), you can see the translation of the latin text which talks about the melting of St. Peter’s heart.
The video ends just before the final phrase which says,
“When Christ turned his eyes to look at him
It all melted and dissolved into tears.”
These days, I continue to dissolve at the sight and sound of our singing, because I keep seeing and hearing the divine (Christ) within each of us, but only through a screen.
I remember how excruciatingly difficult it was to memorize Lagrime. How did I even do it?!?
I guess I did it in a manner similar to what I’ve been having my own students do during this period of “social distancing” due to COVID-19. I recorded myself singing along to videos of our blocking rehearsals, which the LA Master Chorale provided as a means for us to study our movement at home. In my car and at home everyday, several times a day, I listened to that audio practice recording I made using my phone and my computer.
It was so eye-opening to hear myself singing to/with my tribe. My singing on these practice recordings wasn’t perfect by any means. But I can hear myself singing with so much heart. I remember how everything was just easier and more musical when I could feel those voices against my own. In those recordings, I can hear what I sound like inside the ensemble. I sound like I’m at home inside the harmony, rising and falling, immersed in song with my fellow singers. That’s why I have my students do this work, singing and practicing with recordings of the voices of people that know and care about them. I hope they can hear and feel at least a little of what I’ve felt and heard in this work.
I kept listening to my practice recordings in the car on my way to and from work for weeks following the premiere performance of Lagrime. Lately, I’ve started listening to them again, and every now and then, I get a little weepy. There are 20 separate madrigals in Lasso’s Lagrime di San Pietro, and we memorized them all. But number 10 was always my favorite. There is something so powerful about the melting of a frozen heart. Just as there’s something relatable about the dissolution of a person into tears.
