With A Voice Of Singing...

"With a voice of singing declare ye, and tell this; utter it even to the end of the earth. Hallelujah!" - from the anthem "With a Voice Of Singing" by Kenneth Jennings

The Reading of the Gospel, sometimes sung, in the midst of the people.

The lyric above is from a choral anthem that we have sung at St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral on a few occasions.  It is a lovely anthem, has some beautiful harmonies in it.  Matt and I have been in the Cathedral Choir since July of 1995.  We tried out for the choir at the urging of another member. We had been attending regularly since the bombing of the Murrah Building in April.  We had attended sporadically before that since we had arrived in Oklahoma in June of 1993.  When the bombing happened, so close to the church, we decided that we had better get ourselves back in the habit of regular church attendance, and we should make ourselves useful members of the congregation.
So, for almost 20 years, we have been with these gifted musicians, week in and week out, over every major holiday, singing and being blessed in doing so.

When you sing with someone for many years, your voices blend, merge, fill in the gaps for one another almost seamlessly.  Lou and I have been singing next to each other for 18 years now, and we sound like one voice when we sing together.  Leah hasn't been with us as long, but already she is blending with us so well that we still sound like one voice.  Many times now, I will sing 1st with Leah, and Lou will sing the 2nd Soprano line with Mary.  Such long association even helps with harmonies.  It's like we can feel our way around each other and the music somehow.

Our rehearsal this evening was a wonderful reaffirmation for me of how much I have learned, and how well we all work together.  Most of the pieces were familiar, and we picked them right up.  The one that we more or less sight read was not as difficult as we thought it might be.  All still need practice and polish, but we knew what we were supposed to sing, and could find the notes. And I did this with a scratchy throat from allergies.  I have decided it isn't a cold, because antihistamine makes it almost completely go away.  Colds are unfazed by the antihistamine usually. Also, the grass and ragweed pollens are off the scale this week.  I wasn't always so sensitive to them but since they tested me, and I came up slightly sensitive, I'm feeling like maybe I'm now MORE sensitive to those pollens.
At any rate, I am very grateful to still be able to sing.  Singing makes me feel so good, lets my spirit soar, and when I lose my voice, it is extremely frustrating.  Not just for the progress I lose in my voice training, but for the fact that I cannot let myself soar with the music when my voice is gone.  I miss the communion of sound when we sing with the choir, I can't bear to be in church if I can't sing.  Singing is such a big part of our worship in the Episcopal Church.

Our church has an entire page of the website devoted to our music.  Here are a couple of things from that page:

O Come Thou Sweet Redeeming Fire  sung by our Cathedral Choir.  (Lou and I were singing First Soprano.)

A photo of Lou and I in the loft singing :