One of the best things about my job is that I have to spend a lot of time listening to beautiful music. And at this time of year I have to do it even more than usual, because this is when I’m working out what new things we might sing in the year ahead. As always, the other choir leaders and I share our ideas about things we’ve heard that we think could work, and sometimes it means I follow a thread which takes me through several different arrangements of the same song.
Steven sent me a clip of a community choir singing May It Be, then I found another and another, and finally this exquisite Voces8 arrangement. It’s worth a listen, just for the sheer magic that these guys weave.
Feel free to listen without anxiety about how hard this version is - we won’t be doing exactly this (I’ll talk about why not a bit more, maybe next time), but we will be singing this song this year. Because although it’s been around for a while, when I listened to it again this week, I realised it’s perfect for us right now. The music itself is beautiful but (in its original form) uncomplicated.
But the words contain something we need to be telling each other at this moment, and singing it to ourselves as much as to each other. I’ve always thought that the words we sing matter as much as the music. Singing brings together the two sides of the brain - simplistically, the thinking and the feeling, or the language and the music, or the knowing and the creating. Have you ever noticed how you remember song lyrics more easily than you remember poetry? And even poetry with its rhythms and shapes is easier to remember than prose… Which is one of the reasons I prefer to sing songs which have poetically-written lyrics.
But most of all, I believe that when we sing words, they go deep into the psyche, and become part of our thinking and feeling. Of course it’s fine for us just to sing something for fun sometimes! I don’t believe that every single song we work on in choir has to be deep and meaningful. It’s ok for some things just to be neutral and their value be in other things. But I do try not to work with texts that I think have a negative message. There are plenty of songs which point us in the direction of hope, encouragement and generosity of spirit, and I’d rather we had those messages playing in our heads and in our communities.
Here’s the “blessing” contained in May It Be (again, I use that word in whatever sense you’d like it to be - secular or sacred or anywhere in between).
May it be an evening star shines down upon you.
May it be when darkness falls your heart will be true.
You walk a lonely road, how far you are from home.
May it be the shadow’s call will fly away.
May it be your journey on to light the day.
When the night is overcome, you may rise to find the sun.
