Guest post by Jeanne Marie
“Jours Passe” and The Unscripted Fermata
One of the things I do a lot of is singing in front of other people, and teaching other folks how to do the same. Very often, people will tell me how frightened they are of making mistakes. The truth of music-making of course, as I am quick to point out to everyone, is that EVERYONE makes mistakes, ALL THE TIME!! Even in big time, high-dollar performances! The real trick is in not letting your audience realize that you have made a mistake. My personal classic story that illustrates this comes from my undergrad days…
Many of you who are or have been music majors no doubt have memories (fond or otherwise) of a particular beast known as Recital Class.* This is a class designed to give you experience with performing music in front of other people – specifically, in front of the entire music department and all music faculty members.** This builds character.
It was a French song. Of course it was a French song. ”Jours Passe.” I don’t really like French songs, truth be told. This one wasn’t that spectacular, a fairly simple refrain, verse 1, refrain, verse 2, refrain, verse three, refrain kind of structure. One small, miniscule element of this particular French song was that almost all the refrains ended with a fermata.*** The “almost all” is the important bit, because the very first refrain didn’t end with a fermata – it plunged ahead boisterously.
I had performed the song once already that week, in my studio class – sang it for my voice teacher and all her voice students. And, it had gone well enough that I wasn’t unduly worried about singing it again in front of everybody else. So, I took the stage to polite applause, and my accompanist started in. I came in on the first refrain, sang it through…and, I fermata-ed at the end of the first refrain.
My accompanist, who was reading the music, plunged ahead boisterously. I continued to fermat. I was beginning to run out of air, and my accompanist was still playing, rather than waiting with fingers poised gracefully above the keys for me to finish fermating. I had no idea where she was, what her music said, or why she was playing over my fermata! Undaunted, I went with my stock screw-up position – when in doubt, go back to the beginning. So I smiled angelically, ended the fermata and then went back and sang the first refrain again. With a fermata at the end. My accompanist was deep into the accompaniment of verse one by this time.
Did I mention that the refrain and the verses were all in different keys?
When the second fermata didn’t elicit the fermata response from my poor, beleaguered accompanist, I decided to plunge into verse one. I sang and gestured expansively^ with a sprightly smile. My accompanist was somewhere in the second refrain by now, and things were beginning to sound distinctly John Cage-ish.^^ My accompanist abandoned the written accompaniment, and played a single note for a while, aiming for a pedal point kind of effect, before giving up playing entirely. I continued to smile sprightly, gesture expansively, and sing Frenchly. My accompanist flipped pages madly, trying to figure out where I was based on my French pronunciation.^^^ I finished the verse without any accompaniment and, with a coquettish smile, leapt into the next refrain. Again, I fermata-ed dramatically at the end of the refrain. My accompanist heard me fermating, and finding a fermata in the score, jumped in with some post-fermata accompaniment. Luckily I recognized where she was, and we ended the piece together.
We bowed to the polite applause, and exited to the green room, where we collapsed into quivering heaps, and compared notes, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. As we compared notes, one of the other vocal students in my studio, who had heard the song sung correctly not two days prior, came in and said, in all seriousness: “You know, you always have the coolest music. Where did you find that piece with the neat acapella section in the middle?”
The point of all this is that, when performing, if you sell it, they will buy it! Smile beatifically, gesture expansively, and you can carry off almost any mistake!
* * *
*or somesuch name. Different schools call it different things. Same basic principle.
**depending on the size of your music department, I suppose. We had a smallish department, about 50-75 music students total, and about 15-20 professors. I’ve heard of some departments that only do Recital Classes within each instrument or discipline because they are so large!
*** 
+ A music symbol telling you to hold the note as long as you (or the conductor, or whoever is in charge) like, while everyone stares in admiration, and the accompanist waits with fingers poised gracefully above the keys for you to stop singing.
+ Note from Robin: Arrrgh. It should have occurred to me that the fermata might not come through. And it hasn’t. Not on my screen anyway. It’s what us low-level fumblers merely call a ‘hold’: a dot with a semi-circle over it, like a cartoon eye and eyebrow.
^ “flowers over here, flowers over there, all the frelling lovely French flowers…”
^^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtSdBtJC42k
^^^ HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
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