Tuesday, December 14, 2004 - Maybe I Shouldn't Be Such A Perfectionist, But...

I was seriously annoyed about the music in last Sunday's church service. I can chalk a lot of it up to PMS, but still hear me out.

Every year, two Sundays before Christmas, the chancel and handbell choirs prepare a large number of pieces for a service which is almost exclusively music. I thought we were just awful on Sunday, compared to our usual performance.

Now, I don't usually fret too much about the handbell choir, since there are a number of beginners in the group, and mistakes happen. But our first piece was one of our "showcase" pieces - a rather difficult rendition of _Carol of the Bells_. Now, I have the dubious distinction of being the one carrying most of the melody for the first half of the piece (you know how the piece goes). Now, the player immediately on my right needs to come in with the harmony at the right time - and she's a measure ahead, and it's screwing up other people, and I'm counting off measure numbers to her, but she's got earplugs in (because it's a very loud piece and the volume is too much for her ears), so she doesn't hear me. She finally got things straightened out after 15 measures or so, and it's not as though the piece fell apart, but still, after all the work we did on that...

Then there's the Chancel Choir. Everyone, but particularly the men's sections, were *really* flat. It's just painful to listen to it. It was particularly annoying in one piece which was supposed to be a quiet piece, but the rest of the tenor section behind me was just absolutely blasting into my ear, and they sounded horrid too. Ugh!

I'm sorry; I've been whining. But we work really hard at this music, and sometimes it's just perfect, but when a "performance" comes around and it's just so bad I can't stand it. I know, don't fret over it. The congregation doesn't much notice when we make mistakes, and even when they do notice they tend to forget about it quickly.