I awoke this morning to discover I have no voice. Well, not quite no voice, but pretty close to it. In order even to be heard, I feel like I�m yelling everything at the top of my lungs. It�s like one of those nightmares where something bad is about to happen so you try to scream but no sound comes out and you wake up in a cold sweat.

It�s been particularly challenging for AJ who still needs to be read to and sung to. My husband�s picked up some of the slack, but AJ insists on songs before bed and refuses to have anyone sing to him but me. AJ himself has been helping out with the reading. He�s getting quite good at it and he�s very proud of his newfound skill. He still needs help figuring out words he doesn�t know, but if we pick the right books then he does quite well. And then there are always the books he�s memorized inside out.

It amazes me how easy it is for him to commit things to memory. I wish I still had that skill. I remember when playing through a piece once was enough to have it under my fingers and play it back, even if it was fairly complicated. There is that apocryphal story of Allegri�s Miserere. Supposedly it was sung at the Vatican for centuries but had never been written down; it was instead passed down orally from generation to generation of choirs. Mozart heard it once and went home and transcribed it. When I heard the story, Mozart was 6, although I�ve since heard other accounts that say he was 12. In any case, this story is generally used to illustrate Mozart�s extreme precociousness, his early genius. But really, I think in some ways such a skill would be less difficult for a child with musical training than for an adult. Their memories are incredible. They suck it all in and file it away in their little minds, Aristotelian tabulae rasae. And lets face it, the Miserere, while beautiful and effective, is rather repetitive. If you hear it once, you�ve already heard it four or five times.

For years I have sung the Miserere as part of a Tenebrae service during Holy Week with the school I�ve performed with. Tenebrae was originally intended for services as part of the last three days of Holy Week. It has largely been abandoned, but revised forms of liturgy have come back. The service we sang was always on the Wednesday of Holy Week, and included a series of readings chanted in English and Latin and followed by anthems, mostly from Palestrina and the like. After each section, another series of lights was turned out until there remained no light at all. At the same time, all of the decorations of the church are stripped away, until nothing remains but wood and stone. The altar is ritually washed. The Allegri Miserere was the dramatic peak of the service, sung in the dark. Following the Miserere, was a scripture reading of the death of Christ. The earthquake was reenacted by the priests banging clappers and the congregation stamping their feet and banging on the pews. The service ended in darkness and silence. There would be no communion until Easter Sunday, after the Resurrection. Spiritually, the congregation has been abandoned. Regardless of one�s personal spiritual beliefs � and I myself am on the fence -- Tenebrae is extremely emotional and dramatic. I always found myself incredibly moved by that piercing soprano in the Miserere, not just because of its sound but because of how it was dramatically used. Concert performances of the work never seem to capture that aspect.

This year I am not singing. The church where we originally sang this service cast us out several years ago, around the same time our director moved to another state. The choir has not recovered fully and although the service has continued at another church, the heart and soul is not quite there. I have bowed out, and, given my lack of functional vocal chords, it seems lucky that I did so. But I will still hear the Miserere in the cold dark church this week. Sometimes adult memory works fine too. It may not be as literally accurate, but it is bound to experience. My recollection of the Miserere is a collective of Misereres, some performed, some heard live or recorded, all with emotional content and histories all their own. While AJs memory serves to add knowledge to his limited experience, mine seeks to make sense of the patterns in my own experience. And while a young Mozart sought to transcribe his hearing to make it real, I seek to transform real hearings to make them something ethereal and meaningful. For the former task, a literal memory is invaluable. For the latter, perhaps a selective memory is more useful. I prefer not to transcribe such memories, instead holding them close to the heart where they can be examined, free from public scrutiny, at will. Their literal transcriptions are no longer the point.

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