Our Cleveland Singers’ Club sponsors an annual competition for male college and beyond student singers...male classical student singers. Aspiring rock, country, hip hop, jazz, and folk singers need not apply, or so it seems.
These young men dream of careers in opera, oratorio, art song, early music, and such arcane musical forms as are hardly noticed by the media and merit only the barest mention at the Grammy’s. For years they work and study and practice and then practice some more. If they succeed they may earn a comfortable living. Only the most wildly successful make it big and strike it rich. They know that the odds are against them, that most of American society doesn’t care, and that few of their contemporaries have any idea at all about what they are pouring their souls into.
I heard two of our contestants sing last Sunday afternoon. They sweated out their few minutes before four judges and a handful of an audience, but were worked very hard to make it look easy. One of them was an African-American in his 40’s - twice as old as many of the others - who’d apparently just started his studies. I’d love to know what drove him to want to learn pieces by Handel and Ravel at this time in his life. Perhaps he walked away with a $1,500 prize; but whether he won anything yesterday or not, he also received the invaluable experience of having been heard and critiqued. It’s something these artists do countless times on their way to any sort of success at all. Their art is exacting and its standards are astronomical...yet still, few notice.
Why do they do it? The question is close me because one of our daughters is perfecting her craft in the world of classical music. It was one thing when she worked for and earned a bachelor’s in music education, but when she wanted to go on and get a master’s in vocal performance I really wondered about her sanity, even though I had no doubts about her gifts. She earned that degree, and is indeed doing what she loves to do...and working retail to help pay the bills. It’s the way of classical singers. Why do they do it?
Let me guess from the outside listening in: it’s because they have fallen in love. Someone, somehow got them to listen to - maybe even put before them - a piece of music and they fell in love with a rare beauty. The object of their love is the power, the intricacy, the diversity, and the passion of the most extended and complex of Western music’s expressions.
They might have had other infatuations on their way to finding their true love, and they might still eye and enjoy and even be good at other forms of music. But the reason they do what they do is that have given their hearts to that enormous body of classical music that has moved generations of listeners,and even today continues to inspire and challenge and bring joy to people around the world.
I applaud all young men and women who are pursuing careers in art forms that continue to celebrate and to shape our understanding of human nature and history, of how and why we are here and for what. They are among our greatest hopes for our future. They deserve our notice, our encouragement, our gratitude...and a decent living.
