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Stories from the Verse
Con Version
Chapter 167: Cooper 53
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Brown 343
Thursday evening Cooper was washing up the dinner dishes when there was a knock at the door. “I’ll get it,” Tommy said, and leapt up to run to the door. Turning off the water, he followed more slowly, drying his hands on the dish towel.
“Good evening. You must be Tommy. I’m Miss Granger, the church secretary? I just came to drop off a key for your uncle, so he could let the choir in for practice tonight.”
“Thank you, Miss Granger,” Brian said from the hall behind Tommy. He walked forward and accepted the key. “I should be there in a few minutes. I’m on K.P. tonight.”
“Well, I won’t keep you, then. See you Sunday.” She departed. Tommy watched her retreat, and closed the door.
As she turned toward him, he asked, “Are you coming to choir practice?”
Her face scrunched up. “I don’t sing,” she said.
He smiled. “Everybody sings. But that’s fine. I’m sure you have plans, and if it weren’t that the extra five dollars a week helps pay the rent I probably wouldn’t have gotten involved in the choir either--although I do enjoy it. Well, I’d better finish the dishes.”
He did so, and managed to get to the church just as the first teenaged choir members were arriving. He let them in, and as they headed for the music room he stopped in the library to pick up the two piles of music he had gathered and joined them. He raised an eyebrow when a woman about his own age entered, and she responded.
“I’m Donna Brown?” she said. “I play the piano for choir rehearsals. I sometimes play the organ in church when Mary can’t.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Cooper said. “Call me Brian. I’m afraid I might be putting you through your paces tonight. I’m trying a lot of different music, to see what these people can do.”
There were fifteen present, three boys and a dozen girls. He rather quickly decided that one of the boys was there because it was an excuse to see his girlfriend. One was clearly interested in singing, and probably good at it. The third was not so clear. Probably, Brian thought, he’s here because of the girls, but that means he’ll want to look good, and that works. The girls were harder to judge, because of course for girls all gatherings for any reason are a social event, so they were definitely here to see each other (other than the one who might be here just to see her boyfriend). He expected that at least some of them liked to sing, and the others liked to be part of the group. He could probably work with that.
Moving to the front, he began, “O.K., people, let’s get settled. It’s good to have you here. I’m new; my name is Mister Barrelmaster. I’ll probably ask you some questions along the way, to see how you use to do things, but first, I’d like to believe that you all warmed up before you arrived, but I know that’s not the case, so we’ll begin with some warmup exercises.”
He started them with some simple lower-register part scales, up and down continuous ahs three steps, then four, then five, then shift up half a step and do it again, until they had climbed a fifth, eight starting notes. Then he took them back down and did arpeggios, four-note chords up and down quickly with a ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha syllabalization to help focus on proper breath support, again advancing by half steps until they were a fifth higher. Since he had started on a B flat, that gave him an opportunity to hear some low notes and also to see who could comfortably reach the high F.
“Sounds good,” he said to encourage them. “I’ve brought out some songs which I’m given to believe you were working on previously, to see how you’re doing. From what I can see, you’ve been a three-part choir, Soprano-Alto-Baritone. Sopranos, can I see your hands?”
Eight girls raised hands. They were seated together to his left At this age, there were two kinds of sopranos, those who genuinely had high soprano-quality voices, and those who couldn’t carry a part so couldn’t sing alto. He hoped to figure out who was who gradually.
“Then you four are the altos?” he asked, looking at the girls to his right; the boys were in the back. One of the girls answered.
“I can sing with the guys, if you want.”
“Is that what you usually do?”
“Sometimes Mister Cargill had me sing with them, if he thought they needed it and it wasn’t too low.”
“All right, for now sing with the altos, and we’ll see what we think. And if any of you have any boy friends, not to be confused with boyfriends, invite them to join us. That also goes for any girl friends, not to be confused with girlfriends, although I guess we won’t turn away boyfriends or girlfriends as long as they’re here to sing.” He looked pointedly at the two he suspected were there to see each other who were seated with him directly behind her, and she blushed, and he looked away.
“I gather that once a month the adult choir gets a week off and you take their place at both services, so we’d better find something we can sing. Anyone have a favorite?”
One of the boys called out, “Kumbaya.”
It was in the stack, and he supposed there were worse songs, and anyway he had asked, so they started with this Black spiritual folk song, and went from there. He dismissed them five minutes before it was time for the adult choir, the adults already having started to find seats on the other side of the room.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #518: Versers Plan. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
