One of the things I've learned (but not yet mastered) as a choral singer is that one often has to start an entrance long before the actual singing of it: if you wait until the note (or even the beat before) to start exhaling the breath you need or shape your mouth around the syllable to be pronounced, you will come in late rather than on time, and the note will likely start off-pitch rather than ringing dead on. You can hear it in less-experienced/less-rehearsed groups: singers scoop and slide up to the notes rather than nailing them.

(Mind, this is an effect that's actually desired in a lot of the music I sing, since the ensembles I'm in lean more toward jazz, folk, and gospel arrangements than classical. But in classical music, not so much -- and even in jazz, etc., "casual" does not mean "sloppy.")

(Inexperienced singers are also often a fraction late because they're waiting for confirmation from more confident singers that they're in the right spot to come in, but that's a theme for another time).

In Prague, there were sections in the Verdi where the chorusmaster ordered us to "start" the note we were to sing two measures (and sometimes even more) before the entrance in question. I've been thinking a fair bit about this since then -- how there are key components of singing well that are not audible to the audience and that take place before the sounds ever reach their ears.

I was reminded of it today during the orchestra rehearsal for The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace by Karl Jenkins, which we are performing during tomorrow morning's services as this spring's Music Sunday offering. There are several very exposed entrances where "breathing ahead" is critical, including in the exquisite Agnus Dei (which is making me glad that I'm singing soprano for this one, because what a melting, tender line...).

I've also been pondering it a bit because I've been rooting for Roger Federer to win the French Open, and good God has he been making it interesting. There's a nifty tool at the Roland Garros website called Visual Match that graphs the players' momentum in each encounter -- who was more dominant in each game, and to what degree -- and yeah, if you look at the stats yesterday's match between Federer and Del Potro, it was looking downright ugly during most of it.

There's a part of me that can't help wondering if he needs to start mentally playing his matches a couple sets before they actually start, so that he's there at the get-go instead of finally showing up in set 4. Then again, what do I know? I didn't even watch the thing, so I have only stats and commentary to go by; I was too busy and distracted to cope with online video-streaming, so I followed the match via the French version of Roland Garros radio (which was hugely entertaining in its own right, especially the flurries of "oh la la las" and "incroyable"s and "bien"s as RF finally got his groove on) and a couple live-blogging threads. Not having expected to watch it live, I wasn't nearly as incensed as my fellow American fans on those threads over the scheduling/rights clusterfuck that precluded NBC showing the match at all, though I do feel their pain: there are few things more frustrating than being electronically walled out of something that promises to be so fun/revelatory/breathtaking. (And sometimes the mere sheer being-locked-out is highly itch-making: if it weren't for YouTube bandits, I'd never get to see Dr Who Confidential or clips of Les Enfoires...) Having been in the impossible situation of working with incompatible logistical options, I do have some sympathy for the NBC Powers That Be, but I confess I've been enjoying the snark (from professional journalists as well as the peanut gallery) anyhow: before the Open, Nadal seemed fine and Federer had played in nineteen consecutive Grand Slam semifinals, so there's a part of me that's thinking they bloody well should have anticipated a high-interest semi-final when they were negotiating.

That said, the soap opera junkies I've known are way more scary (and numerous) than the tennis fans, so I find I really can't argue with not pre-empting Days of Our Lives.

Back to work now (no rest for the wicked, the weary, and the freelancing...). I loved roaming around France, and I'll write more about that later, but it's good to be back among my books, my electrical outlets, my coffeemaker, The Abbytude, and other conveniences/comforts. :-)