I’m new here
Skulking in the far corner at the low end of the basses;
Delightfully cocooned between Neil D and Alan B’s confidence and conviviality.
It is difficult to be anywhere but the low end
When everything above middle C is an adventure
And one would rather spend one’s Monday evenings about 2 octaves below.
All is new to me, this choral lark;
Arriving on the back of a first experience of Beethoven’s Ninth.
I have no idea what an “Über sternen zelt” is,
But you would definitely hold my interest more were Ludwig Van to bring it down an octave.
Now bidding farewell to Neil with more high F’s
In Blackford’s Mirror of Perfection.
To which I say: F Off
Revered composer’s be damned...
You will know me by my extremes.
A wild swing from inexperienced to overconfident during each rehearsal period.
My fellow basses are equally forgiving
Of the myriad wrong notes and frequent glissandos from dissonance to harmony,
As they are of the switch about a week out,
When my superior ear training finally manages to catch up with my Godawful sight reading,
And I make a bipolar switch from incompetent to unbearably pompous:
Able to pick out not just my wrong notes, but all those around me;
Swallowing the urge to say:
“Come on guys, we’re better than this”;
Knowing full well that I am not better than this
Ah Neil, how I hardly knew ye;
The one dynamic constant since my arrival.
The ever present eye of the storm amongst the flux of repertoires;
Of members;
Of chairs.
And also Tracy, who I secretly suspect of quietly pulling all the strings;
Armed only with a stern eye and a delightful, playful laugh, to which Orff’s “Floret Silva” will forever be dedicated.
But Neil is the furnace:
We the steam;
That sets the engine in motion and pulls magic from thin air.
Those deep insights into the essence of music;
Those nuggets of wisdom that seem to fall without hesitation:
“That thing I just told you to do;
Do that thing...” he says;
As we all shrink a little in our pews
And shuffle our feet (half a bar out of time).
Does he not know that since my arrival
We basses have been engaged in an ongoing tribute to legendary DJ John Peel:
“Wherein every piece of music must be started
At the wrong speed”
It is only a magician who could combine so seamlessly
Being universally recognised as the nicest, kindest man in music,
With the force and vigour required to pinpoint the one error amongst the dozen
That, when corrected, will bring everything else into line behind it.
Focusing with the eye of a surgeon:
Coaxing excellence from timid choristers
With a force and purpose that verges on the ferocious;
And then, when that potency is in danger of souring,
To pull back before an entire section turns inward and silent,
For fear of making another mistake requiring further admonishment;
And allow distraction from superficial bruises with more musical magic
It seems when trying to convey my experience
Of being captured by Neil’s musical spells,
I can only come back to magic.
What a privilege it is to be played like a Theremin,
Two hundred voices strong.
What a privilege it is to simply hear Michael play;
The endless patience required to keep looping the same 4 bars
Whilst we all slowly come up to speed and pitch,
All the while hiding his dexterity and creativity
In service of Neil’s greater vision
And what a privilege to be the raw material of that vision;
To be the clay in the hands of a master sculptor;
To be Michelangelo’s unfinished stone
From which music is waiting to be revealed;
That Neil can see even before it exists
So may you forge onwards,
Knowing that the sadness that we feel at the parting —
And that someone with such an enormous heart could also be so fragile-hearted —
Is only sadness because you have brought such happiness.
That the melancholy is a holding on to what has been
And what still is.
But of course every ending simply precedes a new beginning.
Go well:
For there is of course more magic still yet to come...
© Simon Jolly 2024