by Nils Peterson
I
I’ve been a singer with others most of my life, choruses, choirs, chorales, madrigal groups, barbershop quartets, duets. I love singing, still try to do a little each day, warm up with the computer, doing exercises for voices over 50. In my case, it should be way over 50.
At my senior citizens residence we have a karaoke session about once a month. The guide flashes on the TV screen. You’ve got a mike, the words and accompaniment, and what voice you have left. I specialize in old ballads, the Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett kinds of songs. My most ambitious vocal was trying to sing like Robert Goulet with “If Ever I Should Leave You” from Camelot. I find karaoke fun. The young people who work at my place do too and join us in performing. The reason I’m writing this is I haven’t known any of the songs, not a one, that the young people have chosen to sing. Not sure if they’ve known any of mine.
But I’ve tried to keep up a bit with popular music. I religiously watch the television show The Voice (a show in which young singers compete against each other) trying to keep up not only with what is being sung, but how it’s being sung. It’s clear there is no place for baritones anymore except in country music. The head voice, what used to be called falsetto, is the dominant male instrument. And yes, that often can make a glorious sound. The words seem to be fairly irrelevant which is a good thing since I usually can’t quite make them out. Yet, I am fond of the show and all of those bright young people showing off by singing.
I too like to show off by singing.
II
A friend recently asked me how I came to like poetry. I answered with my usual story of having fallen in love with Leigh Hunt’s poem “Jenny Kissed Me” when I was 17 and taking the Sophomore Survey of English Literature. Later I thought of an earlier source. I learned by singing wonderful songs in school, in church, and family gatherings. My childhood was a time full of song and singing for which I must thank my mother, my churches and my schools.
To help me remember, I ordered from Amazon a copy of one of the early song books that were everywhere when I grew up, Twice 55. It was also one of my introductions to great music. Let me begin with #12, “The Anvil Chorus” from Il Trovatore, #13 “March On” from Aida, (in another similar book I found the Sextette from Lucia di Lammermoor which I painfully tried to play my way through, not well, but I learned something about how strands of song can weave themselves with other strands to make a harmony).
But I was talking about learning to love and, yes, understand something about poetry. #25, “Sweet and Low” is a setting of a poem from Tennyson’s “Princess,”
Sweet and low, sweet and low,
Wind of the western sea
Low, low, breathe and blow,
Wind of the western sea
Over the rolling waters go,
come from the dying moon, and blow
Blow him again to me,
While my little one,
while my pretty one sleeps.
This song was a favorite of my mother’s and I heard it often when I was a child. My mother played the piano a lot and sang. The music itself reflects the gentle rocking of the sea and of the words about the sea, and, while not knowing it, I was also learning about longing.
#27 was a setting of Robert Burns fine poem, “Flow Gently, Sweet Afton.”
Flow gently sweet Afton, among thy green braes;
Flow gently, I’ll sing thee a song in thy praise
My Mary’s asleep by thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.
[I was going to stop here, but I can’t. It goes on.]
Thou stock-dove whose echo resounds through the hill
Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny dell
Thy green-crested lapwing, I charge you forbear
I charge you, disturb not my slumbering fair.
Sing it a few times and pay attention to how much you’re learning, the mouth-delight of “wild whistling blackbirds,” the possibility of half-rhyme in “hill/dell,” the stance of the poet towards sweetheart and nature, observing both and and intertwining of them, the poet’s job. [The making language work for you, “disturb not my slumbering fair.” Aha, you can make an adjective work as a noun. Who would have thought it?]
Now I’m just a boy singing the songs out of the book along with others at Luther League or Swedish Lodge gathering or as the evening’s entertainment when visiting friends, gathering around the piano and singing. None of my learning was conscious, but I remember Robert Frost saying poets get their knowledge not deliberately, but by letting what will – “stick like burrs” as they “walk in the fields.” It is only now, in my early 90’s, have I gotten around to realizing how many poetic burrs stuck.
#28 is Thomas Moore’s “Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms”; #35 Ben Jonson’s wonderful “Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes. (And I will pledge with mine.)” As I sing, my body is telling me how marvelous and melodic language can be. I’m also learning something about a particular way of being in love and the joy of finding language to try and express it.
Also, I didn’t think of them as poems until I found them in the textbook of my sophomore survey of English Literature.
II
From the Introduction to the Popular Song Book Twice 55 Plus
“… this collection of songs represents of movement toward truer brotherhood and spiritual awakening through mass singing – an effort to liberate the spirit of the people through self-expression in song, and add to growth in unity of thoughts and feeling, which is the foundation of individual and national strength.”
It goes on, “As it is fitting in the country of many nationalities, the music included in this book for all America embraces much characteristic folk music of various peoples; patriotic songs, songs of sentiment and home, humorous and college songs, hymns and Negro spirituals, and several standard choruses….
In making this enlarged book, the editors have been influenced by the consideration of effects possible with large groups of people whose singing is guided mainly by natural musical feeling. They have also made due allowance for the larger aspect of community singing that is now rapidly developing –the aspiration to create and encourage a constantly advancing standard of choral achievement and musical appreciation to the end that the desire for self-expression in the higher forms of musical art may be satisfied, and that resultant culture and life-benefit may be realized.”
III
I’ve been thinking about the expressed purpose of the anthology –” this collection of songs represents of movement toward truer brotherhood and spiritual awakening through mass singing – an effort to liberate the spirit of the people through self-expression in song, and add to growth in unity of thoughts and feeling, which is the foundation of individual and national strength” – cannot be fulfilled in our time. What songs can we all sing? Is such an anthology possible in our time? What songs will bind the 2 audiences of our last Super Bowl half time shows? (I loved Bad Bunny, by the way, though I had never heard of him until the publicity surrounding the Super Bowl began. His joy at being alive, his joy at singing about it. I think that is how to choose someone to vote for in an election, his or her face shows a capacity for joy. Think about it as you begin to look at campaign posters. Avoid the joyless face, all teeth, no delight.)
But, yes, a question for our time, what will bind us together, “what songs can we all sing?” “The Star-Spangled Banner?” Well, yes, but it is a difficult song to sing and the meaning is different to people even though the words are the same.