The Final Amen

Way back in my teen years, I auditioned for and was invited to join a 50 voice adult choir. We did the rounds of nursing homes and hospitals, as well as competing in the occasional choral competition. The repertoire was quite varied and ranged between medleys of folk songs to full-on productions of The Creation and Brahms Requiem; bits of which were often edited by our director, a fearsome musical martinet, who felt our vocal talents weren’t quite up to certain scores. She was probably right. With ages ranging from 17 – 70 and not a professional among us, we relied on enthusiasm to carry us through and as such were very popular with our various audiences.

One particular favourite was our annual Christmas performance of the Messiah which, as some will know was first performed at Easter in my home town of Dublin. The choir knew it quite well and as a result, rehearsals were scanty which meant lots of extra work for us newcomers who were unfamiliar with singing it. For me it was even harder, for despite having taken theory classes and studied piano and a year of violin, I couldn’t really read music and was extremely shy and nervous about performing in public. Recognizing I had a problem, I knuckled down, cranked up the record player and learnt the entire work by ear.

November turned to December and along came our dress rehearsal in the performance venue, a local church. Our director had enough pull to attract some pretty big name Irish soloists and the pressure was on us to come up to their professional standard. Gone was the rehearsal piano, replaced by the church organ and, wonder of wonders, a trumpet soloist. We took our places and much to my discomfort, I found myself in the front row; the first alto next to the sopranos, and right under the director’s eagle eye. Somehow we got through, me doing my darnedest not to wander into soprano mode while singing the bits I wasn’t too sure of as quietly as possible. Luckily the full-throated gusto of the others hid my many musical deficiencies.

Finally, we were pronounced as ready as we’d ever be. The following night we all assembled, the men in evening dress, the ladies in freshly ironed turquoise blouses and floor-length black skirts, which in my case was homemade. We were greeted with enthusiastic applause as we filed in and the resplendently dressed soloists took their places. The church was packed to the rafters with smiling faces.

The performance went very well, despite inevitable nerves and the alto soloist suffering from a head cold. The sopranos hit the high notes, the audience rose en masse for the Hallelujah chorus, the trumpet sounded and I somehow managed to keep my place in the score. We hit the Amen chorus at a galloping pace and the relief of seeing the end in sight was palpable. For the most part, we got the ahs and the men in the right spots, with the soloists all joining in.

For some reason, the director liked to pull out the rest between the penultimate and the final amen, perhaps testing our nerve, perhaps waiting for complete silence before blasting the audience one final time. That final amen never happened, however, for into the golden silence a voice in the balcony said “What bus are you getting home, Doris?” and we all collapsed into laughter.

It’s been some years now since I’ve sung in a choir although I’ve participated in some wonderful sing-along Messiah’s through the years. Come the Christmas season, however, I still love digging out my score, cranking up the volume and belting out every part of that fabulous work.

Trostan Singers photo credit: RTE.ie

YouTube Choir Parts Amen Chorus Alto part as it should be sung.

South Shore Scribes memoir prompt: Christmas Story blog challenge “Christmas” #SouthShoreScribesNS @www.emilybowers.ca/ https://wordsbywhittall.blogspot.com/ @https://www.facebook.com/groups/1470587219691626 #Christmas #TheMessiah #Christmaschoral #amwriting #onewordprompt #OneWord