Sing Out!

When our kids were just wee, we had several tapes with children's songs. The tapes were called "Wee Sing..." There was a "Wee Sing America," "Wee Sing Silly Songs," "Wee Sing Bible Songs," and on and on with the "Wee Sing" series.

Many of these songs were ones I knew, and had sung as a child. Some I did not know, but had great fun learning. I learned new favorites: "Boom, Boom Ain't It Great to be crazy," and "Little Bunny Foo Foo." Frankly, I mustn't get started recalling all these songs. Remembering them brings a HUGE smile to my face, but it will distract me from my subject here.

Oh, just one more side-track. One favorite song was "Catch A Little Fox." You know the words:

A hunting we will go, a hunting we will go,
Heigh ho, the dairy-o, a hunting we will go!
A hunting we will go, a hunting we will go,
We'll catch a little fox and put him in a box,
And then we'll let him go!

We would play this portion of the tape, and our daughter who was around one year old would listen intently. When the chorus line came--Catch a little fox and put him in a box, And then we'll let him go!" she would sit up, and join in merrily. As soon as the chorus was over, she went back to quiet listening. We would back the tape up again and again, and every time got the exact same reaction from her. Kind of like a wind-up doll.

So, what got me off on the subject of singing "Wee Sing" songs? Well, recently I attended a church meeting. NO, no--we did not sing "Wee Sing" songs--but we may as well have. The entire church was filled, and hardly anyone used the music. Instead, the words were projected on a screen, and people dutifully read the words. Hardly anyone bothered to sing harmony, or even knew that such a thing existed.  What a let-down.

Now, I confess, if there's something I really enjoy it is singing in four-part harmony. But, if Coke ran that old classic commercial today--I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony--the words would have to be changed.

We are losing--or maybe have already lost--our ability to sing in public. Certain styles of popular music seem to avoid melody at all costs. Televised singing contests, a la American Idol, have elevated harsh vocal performance to an art. I have a friend who teaches voice, and invariably when she gets new students, there's always someone who wants to sing "like they do on American Idol." My friend patiently explains that that's not singing. 

One of the most popular television shows, when I was a college student, was Hootenanny.  OK, you can follow the link and figure out my age...  This show aired on Saturday night.  It was practically required viewing on campus.  Admittedly, in the early days of television, there were very few places to watch it.  So, the college student lounge was a natural gathering place.  By acclimation, Hootenanny was the show of choice.  (And, on Saturday mornings, it was "Rocky and Bullwinkle.  Sigh, the good old days.)  Hootenanny featured many groups who did nothing but sing, sing, sing.

Think of the times now that we do sing together in public?  Don't include church.  And what do you get?  Maybe, if you attend a sports event, you sing the National Anthem--and just hope that someone isn't butchering it in the process.

I can think of a song for almost every occasion.  It doesn't take much inspiration for me.  A day without clouds?  "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning" or "Blue Skies, Smiling at Me."  A cold gloomy day "Oh, The Weather Outside is Frightful."  And so on.

I don't really know how to revive singing.  But, I think we've lost something very special.  Maybe we could start by using songbooks instead of projection screens.  We could skip watching "American Idol" and go instead to a sing-along concert.  We'd better hurry--soon, no one will remember what songs we had.

Sing out!

Wee Sing

I apologize for what I am about to do—I am going to write the words of a song, and I can almost guarantee that, if you know the song, it will get stuck in your head for a while.

It's a world of laughter
A world of tears
It's a world of hopes
And a world of fears
There's so much that we share
That it's time we're aware
It's a small world after all

Not “ringing any bells” yet? Well, here’s the chorus.

It's a small world after all
It's a small world after all
It's a small world after all
It's a small, small world.

If you click on the link, you will be able to listen to the music. And then? And then, it will be S-T-U-C-K in your head all day. I can think of no other song that so insinuates itself into our minds!

Music has such power. It charms us when we are young and it stays with us as we grow old.

When our children were small, I sang lots of little ditties to them. In fact, when our daughter was little, we got a series of tapes called Wee Sing. There were Wee Sing Camp Fire Songs, Nursery Rhymes, Christmas Songs, Bible Songs—and on and on. The songs were such fun.

We found one particular song our daughter really liked. It’s the song “A-Hunting We Will Go.” The chorus included these lines: “We’ll catch a little fox and put him in a box, and then we’ll let him go.” She loved that line. She’d sit up in her chair, animatedly sing “Catch a little fox” and then relax. I confess, we backed the tape up multiple times just to see her spring to life singing about the little fox.

Children’s songs that include animation have always been a favorite for me. I sang “The Grand Old Duke of York” to my children and their friends, especially if they were outside playing. I marched the kids up to the top of the hill, down the hill, and half way in between. If you want more Kids songs just click on the link.

We also had a softer side to singing. I always sang my children a bedtime lullaby—either Edelweiss (from The Sound of Music) or the lovely old Welsh melody All through the night. I still think the words to this lovely folk song are so appropriate to falling asleep.

Sleep my child and peace attend thee,
All through the night
Guardian angels God will send thee,
All through the night
Soft the drowsy hours are creeping
Hill and vale in slumber sleeping,
I my loving vigil keeping
All through the night.

In fact, singing is what sparked the romance between me and my husband. We met at a church camp, where we were both staff. But our immediate reaction to each other was. . .less than positive. As the camp week passed, though, we began to talk. And then we began to like each other. Then there was the final night when campers camp out overnight. My husband was a counselor, so he was going to be sleeping out with the kids. I was a crafts teacher, so I was supposed to go back to the main cabin. But, I stayed and we kept talking. And then, I sang to him a folk song (made popular by Peter, Paul and Mary) to the melody of O Waly Waly—“There is a ship.” Thus began our romance.

Well, I don’t know if music really has the power to start a romance, but once imprinted in our brains, music stays there long after other memories fade. When my mother-in-law, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, had lost her ability to speak, she could still sing songs. I was amazed when the nursing home staff told us she had taken part in Christmas carol sing.

So how am I going to get “It’s a Small Small World” unstuck from your brain? Well the only thing that I know that works is to watch the Knut polar bear video. The song featured on that video will replace the Disney song easily!

Let the sounds of music creep in our ears

One of the banes of my driving existence (when I am not railing against drivers talking on cell phones—that’s a whole blog subject in itself) is to pull up next to a car that is fairly jumping off its tires with super hyped loud speakers blaring, nay thumping, rap. Blecccchhhhh!!! I feel like yelling to the driver—on the assumption that he could actually hear me—to say: Do you mind? I don’t make you listen to my music; please don’t make me listen to yours.

Well, today as I was out running errands and listening to my local NPR station, a piece of music came on that gave me the chance to pay back all the rap thumpers: Charpentier’s marvelous affirming Prelude to Te Deum. What a joy to listen to this magnificent piece. As I pulled up to a traffic light, I cranked the sound up all the way and eased my windows down a bit. Glorious!

I do love music—and for me that means serious (so-called classical) music, some jazz, classic rock and a smattering of other music styles. I love singing. The music experiences I love best are those where music has moved me to tears. Several such occasions come to mind.

Some thirty years ago, when I was singing in our church choir, the then choir director arranged for us to perform Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy. At that time, I had never heard the Choral Fantasy before. Many of the themes that Beethoven would later develop in the 4th movement of the 9th symphony are teased at in the Choral Fantasy. For the piano soloist, the choir director lined up Daniel Epstein, who at that time was a budding young pianist. Since our church did not have a piano worthy of being played for such a performance, the choir director went hunting for a suitable piano. I don’t remember where he found it, but the choir director located a lovely Steinway grand piano, that today is one of the church’s prized musical instruments. Soloists were secured, and the Motet Choir, as we were then called, practiced and practiced. Finally, we performed the piece and all the elements blended. To this day, I cannot hear the Choral Fantasy without my eyes filling with tears. And, yes, I crank the sound up on that piece as well.

Our choir would go on to do other wonderful choral pieces—we sang Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass that even now I can still sing almost from memory. We sang Haydn’s The Creation (the wonderful opening movement evoking “let there be light” is the best musical rendition of creation I have ever heard) and Haydn’s The Four Seasons. We sang Durufle’s Requiem and works by Langlais. But one signature choral piece that we never sang was Mozart’s Requiem.

I had listened to Mozart’s Requiem many times. In fact, when I first went to see the play Amadeus performed, the first few opening bars of a piece of Mozart’s music set me to weeping. The Requiem is featured prominently in that play (and also in the movie adaptation). But I had never sung it. Until. . .

On the first anniversary of the destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, someone had the inspiration that a fitting way to memorialize that event and those whose lives were lost would be to have Mozart’s Requiem sung in every time zone around the world. The performance would begin at the exact minute the first plane struck the South Tower. Since the piece takes an hour to perform, a choir in one time zone would be finishing as a choir in the next would be beginning its performance. When the choirs were announced for Harrisburg, PA, I signed up. Of course, we practiced; to be sure not so much as if we were performing the piece in a concert performance, but we did practice.

Then on September 11, 2002, we gathered at the Rotunda of the state capitol building in Harrisburg, and with a massed choir of several hundred, and only piano accompaniment, we sang Mozart’s Requiem. Thus I participated in what was called the Rolling Requiem. The work begins with the somber dark tones of the Requiem itself, then moves into the Kyrie. Next comes the crashing fearful Dies Irae (Day of Wrath). My favorite is one of the more lyric portions of the Requiem, the lovely and moving Benedictus. What a thrill—what a somber moment—what an experience moving me to tears.