During my last year in Nashville, I had the incredible opportunity to sing with Vanderbilt's Blair Collegium, an acapella chorus of 20 voices focused on pre-16th century and 20th century music. My short time with the group provided a number of profound experiences, the most memorable of which was learning and performing "Friede Auf Erden" by Arnold Schoenberg. Although we performed the piece twice, our first performance - last December at Westminster Presbyterian on West End - will likely remain the single most exciting musical venture of my life.
To put it mildly, I was lucky to be in Collegium Vocale considering my relative lack of choir experience and vocal training, not to mention my mediocre voice and range. However, due to a good sight-reading audition and the director's belief that I could sing the second tenor parts of that semester's material, I was accepted into the group and began rehearsing immediately. Prior to Collegium, all of my choir performance experience followed a predictable formula: learn the song in rehearsal and take the stage with a confidence that those routine rehearsals would result in nothing less (and, perhaps, nothing more) than a competent rendition of the piece. Rarely did a performance contain an ounce of spontaneity, and afraid of being branded a dork, I sometimes kept an ironic distance between myself and earnest performance in the form of irritating smirks and destracting inside jokes. "Friede" didn't follow the usual rules or allow for personal detachment. Every performance of the song was a crap shoot, each voice relying on every other voice to sing their part correctly lest the entire piece derail into (unintentional) atonal oblivion. Simultaneously, our director - quite rightly - equally emphasized phrasing and dynamics that mirrored "Friede's" violent but hopeful text. Like Schoenberg's score, this textual interpretation could not be expressed by rote memorization, but only by the concerted effort and full concentration of each choir member.
I remember taking the stage at that December concert excited by the gamble of performing such a difficult piece. I was equally excited to know that every single member of the choir was totally dialed in, sincerely committed to an evocative and honest rendering of the piece. When we had finished singing, far before I began critiquing that particular performance, I felt a profound sense of satisfaction knowing that, at the very least, we had succeeded in mustering and maintaining an intensity, focus, and vulnerability necessary to do the work justice.
Download "Friede Auf Erden"
