For the Love of Singing

 

I have sung in choirs most of my life. I spent most of my growing-up years in DeTour Village, Michigan, in a small school without a choir, but I sang in the junior choir at church as soon as I was old enough. Then, when I reached high school, I moved up to the adult choir.

In those younger days, the only year I didn’t sing in a church choir was when Daddy took a sabbatical to Edinburgh, Scotland. There we visited around from one church to another, so I didn’t have a church home. Fortunately, however, the school I attended had a choir, and I passed the easy audition and joined it. So I still got to sing.

Just before my junior year in high school, we moved to Lake City, Michigan. I continued to sing in the adult choir at church, but I was glad to see that Lake City High School had a chorus. I sang in it my junior year but was unable to continue for my senior year. That was because, as a small school, it only had one physics class, and it conflicted with chorus. It was a hard decision, but I was adamantly on the college prep path, so I chose physics. Fortunately, I still had senior choir at church to fill the void.

For two of my high school years, Mama and I sang in an area choir that met for a month or so each year to rehearse and perform Handel’s Messiah. When I say an area choir, I mean that it included several communities and we had to drive a ways for rehearsals and the performance. Unfortunately, I can’t remember if that was my freshman and sophomore years when we lived at DeTour Village or my junior and senior years when we lived at Lake City. I’m also not sure whether we did the Christmas or the Easter section of the Messiah, although I think it was the Easter one.

I sang in the college chorus my freshman year at Hope. The next step up was a more elite choir that required auditions, and I didn’t make it. Obviously, I wasn’t destined to make my living as a singer, although that wasn’t my goal, anyway. I just wanted to sing, so I joined the choir at the church I attended regularly.

From then on, I always sang in my church choir except for a several-year period when I was taking graduate courses that conflicted with practice. But as soon as I could return to choir, I did.

My vocal range is quite good, and I have sung both alto and soprano. I prefer soprano, but there have been years when more altos were needed, and I obliged. Even when I sing soprano, though, I keep up with my alto. I usually sing soprano on the first and last stanzas of hymns and alto on the middle ones. Caroline picked up the practice from me when she was young.

I am on the far left in the picture at the top of this page. The photo was taken by our choir director, Karen Foote, on January 14, 2024. The temperature was seven degrees below zero that morning, and Karen’s mother said the choir would never show up to sing at the 8:00 a.m. service. Karen took the photo to prove her wrong. (The only people who were missing had already notified Karen they would be absent for other reasons.)

Some day I’ll have to give up choir. It may be because my voice gives out but is more likely to be because my knees do. I dread the day I am no longer able to climb the steep stairs to the choir loft.

But I will never stop singing.

The Wagner Inheritance

 

Last week I talked about the travel bug that my family got from my father, so its only fair that I give my mother equal time. She passed down her love for music and some of her musical ability. I don’t say all of it, because she was a better musician than I am.

My daughter Caroline also benefited from Mama’s musical inheritance. Caroline sings in her church choir and in other choirs whenever she has the chance, and she directs the chime choir at her church.

I grew up with music. Both my parents loved classical music, and Daddy picked the hymns we sang at church, but he couldn’t carry a tune. It was my mother who provided the real inspiration for my own love of music.

Mama also grew up in a musical family, although she didn’t realize it at the time. Apparently Grandpa Wagner had learned to play the French horn at one time but gave it up before he got married. He didn’t give up the bones and the mandolin, however. He wasn’t a performer but often played them at home.

Most of the Wagner siblings learned to play an instrument, and they all enjoyed singing. Mama’s secondary instrument was the piano, but her primary one was her voice.

As an elementary school teacher, Mama taught music in her own classroom. Eventually she found herself learning to conduct and leading choirs. She was the choir director at most of Daddy’s churches although she never replaced a willing volunteer who was already there when they came.

When my brothers and I were children, Mama gave us two kinds of music lessons. I called one of them “alto lessons” because she had us read and sing the alto on hymns while she played the entire harmony. I enjoyed the alto lessons, which were really her way of teaching us to read music.

She also gave us piano lessons, and that was a mistake. Not the piano lessons themselves, but that she was the one who gave them. The church organist gave piano lessons, and I would have learned better from her.

Although Mama was a decent piano teacher, there were two problems with taking piano lessons from her. One was that she didn’t have much time to teach us during the school year. Most of our lessons took place during the summer, and in the meantime I forgot much of what I had learned.

The other problem is that I was taking lessons from my mother. If I had taken lessons from Mrs. Stevenson, I would probably have practiced more in an attempt to impress her. But Mama was Mama. She was going to love me regardless, and I felt no need to impress her.

One of my biggest regrets is that I didn’t spend more time learning to play the piano. I can pick out a melody and play simple pieces, but I wish I had learned to do more. Maybe I should try learning more now, but I don’t seem to have the time.

I did put a little more effort into learning violin (with a teacher who wasn’t Mama), although I didn’t practice that as much as I should have, either. Unfortunately, although I loved the instrument, it didn’t love me. Dexterity is important for a violinist, and my fingers just wouldn’t cooperate.

Mama continued with her music after my parents retired. She even picked up a new instrument by joining the handbell choir at their local retirement center. And she always sang in choirs even when she wasn’t directing them. That’s her on the far right in the picture at the top of this post, singing in the choir at the church my parents attended in Holland, Michigan after Daddy’s retirement.

And I followed in those footsteps, as I will discuss in next week’s blog post.