Camp Fasola, community singing

Camp Fasola culminated in a two hour singing tonight; local singers were invited to attend, and a dozen or more were in attendance.

Tonight’s singing was in the Chapel of St. Francis at Camp McDowell. The interior is mostly wood and glass, which was good for the sound of our singing; but the ceiling is very high and steeply pitched, and the room has a long reverberation time, which was not so good. I sat on the left end of the front bench of the bass section for an hour, and I could hear fairly well from there — more precisely, I could hear the trebles (since they were directly across from me) and the altos (since they were to my immediate left), and I could hear the front bench tenors, and above all that a general hum of singing. It was a good sound, a bright and exciting sound, but not what you’d call a clear and distinct sound.

Many of tonight’s leaders set pretty fast tempos. It may be that the room pushed us in that direction; or more likely it was pent-up excitement and energy being released at the end of the last full day of camp. I know when it was my turn to lead, I set a tempo that was a little faster than I had intended. Sometimes you just get caught up in the mood of a singing, whether you mean to or not.

There has been a teen conference of some sort going on while we have been here at Camp McDowell. Their leaders asked us to sing for their evening worship service tonight, so after the community singing, we walked over to sing for them. The teens were sitting on the ground completely silent, each one holding a candle. We walked up in silence, sang two verses of both 47b and 45t, then walked away in silence. I don’t know what it felt like for them, but it was a magical moment for me: singing at night under a starry sky for a hundred or teens all lit by candlelight, then walking away leaving silence behind us.