Master of the chorus

Johannes Brahms; Liebeslieder-Walzer Op. 52 and Op. 65; E. Mathis, Fassbaender, Schreier, Fischer-Dieskau, K. Engel, Sawallisch

I’ve told people for years that it was no major chore to get me to play the piano. I did, however, drag my feet when it came time to practice for my lesson. Mom paid for the piano lessons, and that typically accounted for my practice time. But it took until I was in junior high before I began to see the fruits of weekly practice, at which point, all humility intact, I drew inspiration from my ability to do something well.

All of us learn discipline. Someone teaches it to us. We may have a predisposition for it, but it doesn’t automatically appear in our psyche. Some of us reject discipline and seek out the easiest, simplest form of existence. I am naturally prone to laziness; my mom and sisters would vouch for that. I would have been content to slip by in life playing that kind of music that didn’t require an awful lot of effort.

While I was in junior high at Sioux Valley Schools, the high school chorus rehearsal time lasted thirty minutes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. In the fall of 1980, my freshman year, chorus time got expanded to fifty minutes every day. My friends and I were thrilled. And so was our chorus director, Mrs. B. Our rehearsal time had increased more than three hundred percent. How could anything make it better?

Mr. T. stood in front of the chorus in the fall of 1981. We were sad to see Mrs. B. leave, but she had told us about Mr. T. before she left and, as far as our high school chorus was concerned, she said that we hadn’t seen nothin’ yet. Well that wasn’t apparent to us right away. Mr. T. had chosen some fairly simple music for our first concert and we were pretty sure that we could have this stuff ready in a week. No, sir. Just when we could sing this repertoire to our own satisfaction was when Mr. T. started cracking the whip. We worked on vowel sounds. We worked on consonants. We worked on rhythms, fine-tuned our harmonies, polished our dynamics and clarified our phrasing. Mr. T. fused together forty individuals into a single, responsive, musically aware, imaginative unit of collective consciousness. The applause we received at our first concert didn’t so much embody the quality of performance of our songs as it did the effort it took to reach a rung that we hadn’t reached before. And over the course of three years, Mr. T. forged the path of regimen and order to attain theretofore unknown heights of musicianship.

I learned discipline and work ethic from Mr. T. He taught me how to practice, how to rehearse, how to train, prepare and polish. How to perfect. How to find the music in the score in front of you. Those techniques stay with me to this day.

In the summer of 1983, Mr. T. got four of his students, C., D., K. and me, into the South Dakota Honors Choir. In an ensemble comprised of one hundred fifty young singers, he was responsible for a little over two and a half percent of the quality of the choir. On the concert, we sang Johannes Brahms’ “Liebeslieder Waltzes”, Op. 52. Performers of this collection of eighteen love songs usually sing them in the original German, but we sang them in English. Brahms had initially intended for these pieces to be sung by a quartet with duet piano accompaniment. It is common, though, to hear them sung with a full chorus. Interspersed amongst the songs are various duets and solos. I auditioned for one of the duets and won a performance at the Friday evening concert with a young tenor from one of the big schools in Sioux Falls. I chose not to tell Mr. T. about it before the concert, preferring that he find out about it in the program. He was pleased.

Mr. T. has an enormous sense of humor. In the summer of 1991, both Mr. T. and I chaperoned some young musicians through Europe. Our tour took us through the city of Untervossen in southern Germany. The Deutsche Alpensegelflugschule (German Glider School) lies on the outskirts of town. From our hotels, one morning, we strolled out to the runway. While we stood nearby watching the gliders take off, one of the teachers ambled over and asked if I wanted a ride. I handed Mr. T. my camera and headed off to one of the gliders for the ride of a lifetime. I thoroughly enjoyed the Alpen view from high aloft the summer Bavarian gales, despite my susceptibility toward motion sickness. When we got back down, I thanked the man, then headed toward the bench where Mr. T. sat. Feeling lightheaded I sat down. I see spots in front of my eyes, I said. “Have you seen a doctor?” Nope. Just spots. We laughed for about five minutes.

Credits: To C., D. and K., for sharing with me one of my most favorite musical moments, compliments of Mr. T.