Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Faith of Our Fathers and Brothers

With Father's Day just a week away, I felt that the hymn "Faith of Our Fathers" would be especially appropriate last Sunday. My attempts at getting the three men together to learn an arrangement failed. Someone was always out of town on business.

OK, I thought, let's do this: You sing the tenor from the hymn book. You sing the bass. And you please sing the melody. The first verse will be all parts. The second verse the person with the melody sings the words while the tenor and bass ooh their parts until the chorus, then all join in again with parts. The third verse will be all singing unison until the chorus, when everyone will sing parts to the end.

We ran through the whole thing maybe twice all together before the performance, but I felt it worked out amazingly well.

The brother singing the melody came to me after the meeting and said, "I didn't realize I would be practically singing a solo on the second verse while the others were oohing! (Since he is originally from Spain, he said so with his wonderful accent.)

I said, "I told you they would do that!"

To which he replied "Well, I don't speak English!"