Sunday, February 19, 2012

For the love of Music

At a time of the year when thoughts of many turn to love, I am in the final days of rehearsing for upcoming performances. It's exciting and exhausting, frustrating and exhilarating all at once.  I mean, when I get in the car to make the long drive to rehearsal for the third time in a week, I almost have to force myself to make the trip.  Why am I doing this?  I say to myself all the way there.  Then I arrive, the music making begins, and I am caught up in it again.  It's so difficult to explain.  There are always things that need to be worked on, fixed, adjusted, refined.  But there are also those moments that mesh, gel, or find just the right expression that keep me wanting to do it again.

As choralists, we are always reaching for our best performance,  If we ever think we've reached it, we set the bar higher, knowing that the music has more to give us, and we have to discover it.  Why do we do it?  It's love, of course.  Music fascinates and stirs us, emotional creatures that we are.  We go back to it again and again, relying on our experiences with it as well as searching for new ways to express it.  That's the love of the music; the relationship we develop with it, the pieces of ourselves we pour into it, the joy we gain from it, and the memories we create with it.
To life, to love, to music…