To dare to sing despite the fear

Today I have joined the Stow Festival Chorus. I have loved singing all my life, especially in a chorus, but it has been quite a while since I sang in a chorus or sang at all for that matter. I have been wanting to join a chorus for so long, but did not know where to start and ... well, I was afraid to do it. So when a friend told me she is joining a chorus and if I would like to do so as well, I just replied that I would be too scared to audition and make a fool of myself. And then it tortured me: here was exactly what I had wanted to do and why was I not jumping with joy and instead had fear rule me?

Why the fear? When I was a child (the newspaper clip shows me performing at the age of four) I was musically gifted, but due to lack of adult guidance, I decided against singing in the advanced chorus at school, because I did not want to get up earlier than I had to. Yes, I gave up the chance to sing at the Hamburg Opera to sleep in. Now I could scream just thinking about it! When I was a teenager, I wanted to join a wonderful chorus, but the director told me to wait until I was 15. I could hardly wait, but then got so scared, that I never auditioned and just went to the concerts. By the time I reached University, I was invited to sing in a chorus and since I was successful in anything I attempted at that time (outside of love) I joined and had a wonderful time singing. The singing was exalting, but the chorus itself was very strange. The singers were a very close knit group that also sang in the academic choir and a lot of them studied music part time or full time. I never found a way into the group and it ended on a very strange note (pun intended). Since then I have been paranoid that it was my singing that was so terrible, that it made these unfriendly and arrogant people despise me. This experience - coupled with the the fact that I have never learned sight reading and need to know what I sing or play - left me with so much fear, that I spent the last years just wishing to be singing but too scared to attempt it.

Fear of failure has always stood by me, I can count on that! But if we do not dare, how can we know? The issue with trying something that might not work out is exactly that, it might not work out and then it is a fact. Sometimes it is easier just to keep wishing and not to try, one can have fear and hope at the same time, but when there is failure, the hope has drowned. I am actually very afraid not to be good enough and not to learn enough to be decent, but I have decided that I rather take the risk. For if I take the risk and give my best effort, maybe it will turn out right and this chance, however little it is, is worth being taken.

And so I have joined the chorus (luckily without audition)! Granted, I feel like I do not quite belong there, that I am not good enough, but I will try to become good enough. The Mass in D by Ethel Smyth is sure worth a huge effort.