Pity Our Friends, the Musicians by Rosemary Johnson

Many years ago, my daughter, having heard her friends boasting about going sailing, swimming and horse-riding, bewailed to me that all she got to do in the long school summer holiday was piano practice. 

This wasn’t quite true because I made her do clarinet practice too.

Our poor fellow creative friends, the musicians, have been placed in enforced practice mode since the beginning of lockdown.  Practice is playing your instrument (or singing) in a room by yourself and it’s boring.  We writers might relish being put in solitary for twenty minutes per day but for musicians performing is the point, the whole point, whether in a posh frock in the Albert Hall or on a battered descant recorder in a school assembly.  Concert halls have been closed and remain so.  Music is not being made in schools.  For a long time our churches were closed altogether, so no live music there, and, since we have been allowed back, under very restricted conditions, music has been frowned upon.  In our church, my husband plays hymns on the organ for our weekly in-person services but the congregation is forbidden to sing with him, although we may have a cantor (one person) and, recently, the number of singers has been extended to four – socially distanced, of course.  Social distancing doesn’t work in music because you need to blend in with the other performers and, in order to do that, you need to be able to hear them.

Although software for remote music-making does exist, and was presumably used the Lockdown Choir, it’s tricky and techy.  Zoom stutters if more than a few participants generate sounds at once. 

When the pandemic first hit, scientists believed that singers produced eight times more of the aerosol droplets spreading Coronavirus speaking, which is why music was brought to a standstill.  This seemed to be evidenced by outbreaks amongst choirs, especially in Washington State, USA.  However, more recent research suggests that singing and using wind instruments are not in themselves more dangerous than speaking, but what counts is the volume.  The louder the singing or wind tone - or the shout – the higher the risk.  Ventilation in concert halls (or lack of it, as was the case a few months ago) is also key.  

Writers write.  On some occasions, and for some people, the satisfaction is putting the words down on the page, but most of us have a deep need to share our piece with others, to get our books published, not so much to make money but to tell that story.  How much worse this is for musicians.  Please pray for our intensely frustrated musician friends.  I'm married to one of them.

Rosemary Johnson has had many short stories published, in print and online, amongst other places, Cafe Lit, Scribble, The Copperfield Review, Fiction on the Web and 101 Words.  She has also contributed to Together magazine and Christian Writer.  She has also written a historical novel, set in the Solidarity years in Poland.  In real life, she is a retired IT lecturer, living in Suffolk with her husband and cat.