[From the Ontario District's newsletter,
The Trillium, issue 60-01, January - March, 2006 , Waldo Redekop,
editor.]
20 more reasons
to sing in a quartet
By Grant Carson
What I’ve learned about quartet singing through the years.
-
1. It’s fun.
-
2. You have total responsibility for your part, not the responsibility
for the other guys in the chorus section.
-
3. You can really ring chords! Yes, choruses can produce overtones, but
not the lock and ring of a quartet.
-
4. You don’t have to go through a board of directors or a music committee
to decide what you’re going to sing.
-
5. You don’t have to go through a board of directors or a music committee
to decide for whom you’re going to sing.
-
6. You don’t have to go through a board of directors or a music committee
for anything like moves and such.
-
7. Yet, if you get good, the chapter will ask you to sing on the show.
-
8. If you’re good enough to sing on the show, your family and friends will
be more adoring than if you simply sang in the chorus.
-
9. Your section has unison sound!
-
10. You don’t have to watch a chorus director.
-
11. You don’t have to pander to a chorus director, or look to him or her
for inspiration and all the other things choruses must do with chorus directors.
-
12. You learn more about blend and balance from playing a tape recording
of your quartet than you could ever from a chorus director.
-
13. If you also are a member of a chorus, then you make the chorus better
for having learned to sing in a quartet.
-
14. You don’t have to be a member of a chorus if that’s your preference.
-
15. You’ll be popular with the Singing Valentines chairman.
-
16. You’ll sing Valentines very well.
-
17. Resolving decisions about when, where and what the quartet will sing
only requires convincing the tenor.
-
18. The other three singers take delight in the responsibility of keeping
the baritone in only three dimensions.
-
19. You get to choose your quartet costume. (After convincing the tenor,
of course.)
-
20. You get three really good friends.
k