Music, Music, Music

Tomorrow morning, at 9:30,  I start working with the United Methodist Church choir again at our first rehearsal.  

In fact, I don't expect anyone to actually show up over the Labor Day weekend.  If they do, we won't sing, but discuss the anthems we'd like to do in the choir year, which runs from labor Day until the week before Memorial Day.  We need to count our singers.  Can we do four part harmony this year, or are we going to dwindle to SAB music (soprano, alto, bass)?  Or even two parts?

We are an older choir.  These days people are too busy with their lives to show up for our practices, even though we moved them from Wednesday to Sunday mornings before church.  The few young adults in the church teach Sunday school or catechism classes.  Like many denominations, the Methodists are struggling to retain members.

Each year our choir seems to lose a member or two.  This year it is Elaine, one of our altos, though hers is a happy leave taking.  She is soon to be married and will be leaving Seymour.  That leaves two altos, and one of them lives out of town and often can't make it.

I no longer tell the pastor what we are singing on Sunday.  "Just put 'anthem'", I tell her, since I almost always have to change the selection depending on who shows up. We are lucky in that most of our members read music, so we can adapt. We don't order new music.  We have four four-drawer filing cabinets with music that dates back five decades.  That will suffice.

One of these years will be the last year.  Until then we struggle on, doing the best we can.