Once again, this year I will be enjoying participating in singing at Handel’s Messiah concert in Madrid’s auditorium on December. Enjoying being able to continue learning, continue practicing what has been learned, feeling the emotion with the music. For me it has been a very important challenge and I encourage you to set yourself similar challenges, each one with their preferences!!
I am enjoying music these days and reviewing musical scores and audios to sing again in a large participatory choir of 350 people Handel’s Messiah at Madrid’s Auditorium in two weeks. This was my big challenge last year. I had been dreaming of that moment for years, it seemed to me something very difficult to achieve and with joy I have to say that I got it!
As nowadays learning new things is much slower, it seemed almost impossible to internalize all the notes, their rythm, the lyrics and the nuances of Handel’s music in several months of study. I got it thanks to persistence, enthusiasm, many repetitions and a lot of practice. For a few months I listened to the audios of Messiah’s songs at all times: when I went shopping, when I was in the car, at home in front of the sheet music.
And little by little, with the individual rehearsals and the group rehearsals I was able to feel like everybody else surrounding me and sing and be very touched by the experience in the middle of the great group at the concert.
This year, I thought that I would have to learn almost from scratch all the songs again, and repeat the entire sequence again. And happily, I have realized that last year’s learning had left its mark and that I have been able to go over the songs, like everyone else, and I have not had to relearn it again.
My expectation of having to start from scratch may sound exaggerated, but it really wasn’t. In recent years I have had the experience of seeing how new learning does not leave much of an impression and I need to keep it very active so that it is not erased. The same thing happens to me with the books I read or the movies I watch.
The fact that this learning has left its mark, I am sure, has to do with emotion, with which I have been able to reconnect thanks to the therapeutic power of music, which has meant an important advance for me. We have always heard that learning is best when learning is linked to emotion.
You can see through the home video one of the exciting moments of the concert.
I also think that this trace has to do with the fact that it was a new learning in terms of reading the sheet music associated with the audios, but I have listened to this music for many years since I was very little at home. When my father played it for the first time, we all had the feeling that Christmas was beginning. So that music was already on my hard drive since childhood.
