When Hymns fall apart

Although I've been a choir member for many years I've only been a cantor for two--and I still hate it. Well, "hate" isn't really what I mean. What I mean is that it still causes me extreme stress. It's kind of like stage freight but not really. Even after a good performance, I am happy it is over until the next time. But, when I have a particularly bad performance, like last Sunday, I wonder why I put myself through this torture.

Actually, I thought I was prepared for the mass on Sunday. I knew the psalm and the gospel acclamation; the hymns were familiar and, although the mass parts were different this week, they weren't new, I'd sung them all before. The opening hymn went fine. The Kyrie was spoken and I started out singing the "Gloria" by John Bell quite normally. However, something went wrong mid-song and I found myself singing a different pitch than the organ was playing. A note about this Gloria: I learned it singing the tenor part which is not the melody line. So while singing it as a cantor, there a couple of places I have to watch out for where I tend to slip into the tenor part without knowing it. This didn't happen but it was in one of those spots that the song went to hell. It's pretty embarrassing knowing you're singing off pitch but not finding your way back to pitch. Finally I had a full measure rest where I could grab onto the pitch the organ was playing and finished the Gloria pretty much OK.

But it threw me.

I was confident on the psalm and sang it OK EXCEPT, I got ahead of the organ and had to wait for it to finish a passage before I could continue; annoying the congregation. I don't remember much of the Gospel acclamation but think it went all right. During the Gospel and the Homily, the two readers on the altar with me studiously avoided looking at me drenched, as I was, in failure.

The offertory hymn and the two communion hymns were unremarkable but not disasters and I thought I was going to at least go out with a winner with the recessional psalm but somehow, on the second to last line, my eyes skipped to the last line and well, it took me almost the whole line to recover.

After the mass I beat a hasty retreat but not hasty enough to avoid one of my non-choir friends and two fellow choir members who happily acknowledged my goofs. One of the choir members is also a cantor and she seemed to enjoy my failure just a little bit.

OK, so I have another chance to redeem myself in September so I'd better start practicing and burning that Gloria into my head. OR I could quit this mess (but that would be real failure.)