From: Music As Prayer Can you think of a piece of music that you did not like when you first sought to play or sing it, but now it is one of your favorites? Sight reading it, you got only half the notes. There were strange intervals, irregular rhythms, tangled textures, and an obstacle course of technical problems. If your teacher had not assigned it or your choir director had not chosen it or if it were not required for a competition or a degree recital, that first reading would have been the last of it. But then you set to work. You broke it down into manageable parts, playing or singing just one of them at a time, then putting them together. You took it at a slow tempo and marked in accidentals that you were always forgetting. You became an athlete in training for the Olympics, only your practice field was your instrument or the choir you directed or sang in. Then one morning in the shower you found yourself humming several of the main themes. The music was working its way into you. It was no longer just marks on a page but song in your heart. [...]![]()
