A Most Perfect Gift

"There's nothing else like choral singing in all of human experience. We have the opportunity to create beautiful music together with others, using an instruments that are a very part of who we are."

I wish I could remember exactly the words he used, but this is the closest I can come to what Rodney Wynkoop said to us tonight before we headed upstairs to sing the second of our two Christmas concerts. The room we occupied beneath the majestic Duke Chapel was not designed to hold 150 people comfortably (or uncomfortably, for that matter), but there was a warmth and connectedness and electricity amongst the singers crammed into every corner of the too-small space, and all of us knew that what he was saying was true.

We had worked on the music for weeks, learning the intricacies of rhythm, pitch, blend, tempo, dynamics, feeling, phrasing and text. We'd labored over each piece and worked the trickier elements repeatedly. Still, I never feel quite ready to perform.

It's as if I want the music to invade every pore of my being. I want to breathe it, dream it, feel it in the pulsing of my heart. I want to know it so intimately that it simply flows from me, but that kind of mastery is very difficult to achieve, especially in just a few weeks and in the isolation of learning my bits at home alone. Then there is the challenge of producing the sound I hear in my mind faithfully, despite the limits of my natural voice and its training. The best I can usually do is to memorize large portions of the score and hope to only use my music as a subtle reminder of the details that escape me, while I watch and listen to see how the notes and text will be interpreted in the moment of performance.

That's one of the beauties of music; because it is performed by people, it is never exactly the same twice. Each instance of a piece is nuanced -- influenced by the mood of the conductor, the attentiveness of each choir member, the accidents of timing (such as the train that barged through the neighborhood with whistle blaring during an otherwise quiet moment in our first performance), and the energy in the room. If you are not truly in the moment, you miss the gift of that unique sonority and emotion that exists only there, only then.

I'm struck, as I sit here writing, by a deep feeling of contentment, and a deep feeling of loss. I have these moments only once, and I want their glow to illumine my soul long after the sound waves have died out and we're all resumed the business our lives.

Is it any wonder the angels sing before the King of heaven? Is it a mystery that music is the service perfect beings bring to the deity? Surely not. There's nothing that moves the soul so deeply. Nothing so transformative, when music reflects the highest calling we each possess: the calling to love as we are loved, overwhelmingly and perfectly.

Sometimes, in the moment when the cracks in my "professional" veneer begin to show, I find my voice quavering in emotion, and my eyes brimming with tears. I wonder to think that I have been given the gift to create something that is a reflection of the beauty of the very throne-room of God. I, so broken. I, so imperfect. I, so unequal to the task. Even now I am not quite composed.

I'm so grateful that God has given us tongues to sing His praises. I'm overwhelmed to think that we have been given a gift of such transcendence and power. I'm humbled to be allowed to participate in that gift so publicly. I'm honored to express part of my being I am in songs that display the tiniest glimpse of the glory of the Author and Source of all Being.

The echoes of this music won't leave my mind for weeks. Its deep reverberations may never depart my soul. Somehow, in the blending of voices in that one, fleeting moment, that music has become a part of who I am. What a gift.

A most perfect gift.