The Third Personality: A Novel (8)

COLUMBIA, South Carolina - With the curtains drawn, the Anderson High School Advanced Mixed Chorus began to line up backstage in their voice-balanced sections - bass, tenor, alto and soprano - onto some risers already set up and awaiting them.

In a few moments, the 40-member chorale would be performing their best piece, "Mary Had a Baby," before the judges here at the 1965 South Carolina State Chorus Competitions.

Boys, girls, mixed and even madrigal choruses from all over the state were here for the annual three-day contest, and Anderson High had never won in any group category prior to this event. But its advanced mixed chorus was especially good this time around, and everyone affiliated with any choral program in southwestern South Carolina seemed to know of them by now.

The advance word was out, and the concert hall was rapidly filling with people. This was a group not to miss - especially in the widely-known a-cappella religious selection sung by that first-rate senior alto who folks'd been talking so much about, one Mary-Madonna Turner.

Even the more complacent choral directors from the big-time schools in Greenville (and those from nearby Clemson University, as well) had taken serious notice this year.

The performance had already turned into An Event, and the Anderson High kids knew it. There was tension backstage, but there was also an air of anticipation, even of a peculiar kind of passion none of the students had ever previously experienced.

The low-lit atmosphere behind the curtain now crackled with a strange kind of subdued excitement. Contributing to the mood was student-wide recognition that, in Betty Burdette's final year before moving along to the college ranks where she'd been offered a prestigious and well-paying job for next year, she'd never received the kind of notoriety (or as optimistic an opportunity to finally win) in the high school ranks before - and Lord knows, she deserved it. For 12 years in Anderson, she toiled in obscurity. But she was a knockout choral director, and the kids adored her.

They just had to win this time, for Miss Burdette's sake!

Some of the girls were already crying backstage, knowing that this would be their last big performance with their teacher.

Betty Burdette now stood before the conducting podium reserved for the choral directors, and urgently whispered to her students to be quiet; to line up, and to concentrate on her.

Scanning her charges, she noticed the tear-stained cheeks of a few - and the general tension, even fear, in the faces of some of the others. She then formed a bright smile on her face, motioned with her fingers around the curvature of her upturned lips (telling the singers that they needed to smile, it was now show time); and all too quickly, the curtains began to part …

Mary-Madonna Turner, the high school's only Roman Catholic student and the (all-too-well advertised) featured soloist on this particular piece of music, had been one of the girls sobbing just prior to the curtains opening before them.

She'd hurriedly bowed her head, wiped dry her cheeks and did a hurried sign of the cross with her right hand before the curtains exposed her, in front, on the far left-hand side of the group, on stage. (She'd been so emotional, she'd temporarily forgotten how terrified she should have been!)

When the curtains stopped, the popping sounds of large tape recorders beginning to start their reels echoed acoustically throughout the giant auditorium. From the stage, meanwhile, looking out into the audience, all the singers could see was maybe a row or two of stiffly-seated students from other high schools lined up tightly up front, while lots of multi-colored floodlights seeped into their eyelids from the balcony at the rear of the auditorium and from the footlights directly in front of them there on the stage.

Adding to the surreality of the event was the group's sense, then, of finding itself partially blinded.

In the formal stillness, Miss Burdette then gently motioned for Mary-Madonna to take her place at the reserved soloists' spot on the apron, stage left. In this giant hall, the acoustic resonance was so well-designed that soloists rarely needed microphones and amplified electronics to help carry their voices.

Once Mary-Madonna had reached her spot and was looking over to Miss Burdette for further instructions, the choral director pulled out a small pitch pipe and blew a major triad for the group in the proper key - do, mi and sol - and the chorus members then quietly began to hum their opening chord.

Miss Burdette raised her eyebrows (intimating that the group should do the same, and, simultaneously, keep on top of their intonation, to avoid their gradually singing flat). Her hands, which now formed backwards O's with her thumbs and forefingers in anticipation of her beginning to conduct, then motioned up and down in front of her ribcage, reminding the group to sing all of its notes from the midriff's diaphragm, not from the throat.

A few still coughs echoed out of the audience.

Betty Burdette, now satisfied that she had everyone's attention in the chorus and that they appeared ready to get going, looked warmly over to Mary-Madonna to let her know that she could begin her introductory solo phrase when she was ready.

Offering her teacher back an almost absent nod in return, Mary-Madonna then calmly faced the audience and began singing in her light, clear, and crisply-enunciating voice.

"Ma-ry had a ba-by..," Mary-Madonna sang lightly.

(The "a" sound in "Ma-ry" was to be a long "aa" sound, in honor of the divinity of the mother of Christ, the "Mary" of whom they were singing, Miss Burdette had told the group.)

The chorus immediately followed Mary-Madonna's opening with their own tightly-balanced and somewhat breathy choral strains, singing the very tightly-phrased response (as the choral director had tirelessly instructed them to do), "…My-y Lord..!;" and they then sustained the ending chord on "Lord" into a well-blended "oh" vowel, holding back the "r" and the "d" in "Lord" until the conclusion of the next few measures.

And into the silence of the auditorium, Mary-Madonna continued her solo verse.

"…Ma-ry had a ba-by..," she repeated, only a bit more mournfully this time, in notes roughly a third higher in pitch than those she'd sung just moments before. And again the chorus responded with a slightly-altered, resolution-oriented, "…My-y Lord..!" followed by an aesthetically-sudden, pianissimo hum.

Something palpable was in the air, then, in the auditorium. Mary-Madonna could feel it, as she continued on with her solo. There was a new electricity present, an enriched "musicality;" something was happening, that was for sure, which was actually causing a slight tingle to work its way up her spine.

"...Oh, Ma-ry had a ba-by, he was called-King Je-sus," she sang, consciously emphasizing the diction between "called" and "King" so the words wouldn't come off sounding like, "he was caulking Jesus," which her teacher had cautioned her about.

"…Ma-ry had a ba-by.., oh, yes..," she sang from her heart.

And as the chorus again gently responded, "My-y Lo-r-d," Mary-Madonna collected her thoughts as best as she was able amidst the tingly power charge hanging over them all on stage.

Very shortly, she began her second verse.

"What-did they ca-ll him-m..?" she wailed plaintively.

* * * * *

Sitting in the audience were a surprising number of college representatives bearing scholarship offers for top-drawer singing seniors they'd hoped to discover at this year's competitions.

There was little question in any of these representatives' minds that the charming girl they were now hearing on stage was a wonderful musician with a very big heart. What did trouble them (if that was the word) was the relative lack of "size" of her voice. Her light, airy quality was great for a pop singer, but the strength and power of her singing would hardly be apt to blow out any windows at The Met, or anyplace else where "serious" music might be performed, as far as that went - no matter how hard she trained.

But one man in the audience didn't give a royal hoot about discovering "large" voices (which any lummox with a hearing aid could do), so much as he was just plain interested in landing good musicians with good "ears" for his college's coming-on-fast choral program - and this girl was clearly one of them.

He glanced down to the program in his lap, and looked at the brief description written about her. "Mary-Madonna Turner, a senior at Anderson High School, hails from a Roman Catholic background, and says she hopes to become a composer of religious music one day," the write-up stated.

The comments amused the representative.

First, high school girls do not seek careers as composers - that just wasn't done; therefore, this girl was different. And secondly, his small college, which was located just north of the South Carolina state line in south-central North Carolina, offered an innovative "core program" - which might just support her forays into church music composition: Christianity and Culture, the program was called. It was required of all entering freshmen - and translated into sex semester hours of history.

While he was thinking about this, the choral group behind Mary-Madonna Turner broke into a unison-octaves forte, singing, "…He is called-King Je-sus, mighty coun-se-lor, King E-man-u-el, migh-ty God..!," which culminated in a nicely-composed, nicely arranged major triad transition.

Mary-Madonna, in the meantime, stood silently by, her hands clenched gently in front of her waist, humbly waiting to return to her solo.

Oh, my, the scholarship representative from Saint Andrews Presbyterian College in Laurinburg, North Carolina, thought to himself while shaking his head, as he absorbed the Anderson High choral group's music. What a lovely, magical performance.

There was just no doubt about it, he'd decided.

He was going to do whatever he could to sign this girl to a scholarship.

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