Play in Music & Music in Play: Post-concert Musings

During Master Chorus Eastside’s two All-American Independence Celebration concerts this past Sunday I was struck by how much fun we and our audience were having together.  Eyes were bright, faces shone, laughter rippled throughout the building, both in the audience and on the risers!  We were playing (singing) our music and playing through our music, and we all responded with self-forgetful, childlike joy.  What is it in choral music that can make us, like children, forget ourselves and enter into the spirit of play?

Part of it is the marriage of music and text.  Music heightens emotion and as a result adds subtle layers of meaning and atmosphere to a joke. Take our premier of Spencer Hoveskelund’s Two Homes in Fifty States, a hilarious romp through all fifty states as the narrator, born in a Boeing 737 at 20,000 feet, attempts to find a place to call home!  It wouldn’t have been the same without the rollicking music.  Or the languid, jazzy Java Jive’s positively sensuous description of a good cup of coffee, enhanced with deliciously close harmony, relaxed rhythm, and droll sound effects.  Or our sing along, Oh When the Saints Go Marching In, accompanied by air trombones, air clarinets, air trumpets, air cymbals…whatever the audience felt like creating.  It was sheer fun.

But on the other hand, there was our rousing vocal rendition of Sousa’s The Stars and Stripes Forever.  There are no words; its stellar effect was created by the delightful twist of singers recreating instrumental sounds, especially a sterling soprano mini-group singing the famous piccolo melody with aplomb!  Or how to explain the exuberance of Son de Camaguey with its Cuban dance rhythms and intertwining syncopations?  It’s sung in Spanish, with no jokes involved.  Actually that one is kind of easy; it’s the irresistible rhythm!  And the driving percussion!  And the chance to dance and take on the Latin persona!  It’s pure play in musical form.

I recently read an article in which the author studied children at play.  It seems they make musical sounds, both consciously and unconsciously, as they play: chanting, dancing, “rhythmicking,” rhyming, clapping, and parodying songs and poems.  I guess music and play are natural partners, and we never quite outgrow them.  As Charles Dickens said in A Christmas Carol, it’s good to be children sometimes.  And although he was talking about Christmas, it holds for all holidays…or for any day for that matter.

May your 4^th of July celebrations be full of music and play!

Dr. Linda Gingrich

Artistic director, Master Chorus Eastside