The First Beat Hasn’t Sounded Yet

What often happens first is not sound, but a row of very slight shoulders.

The conductor’s hand is still in the air, and air has already entered the chest cavity. If you only listen to the finished result, that instant sounds like a blank before the first note; in the rehearsal room, no one treats it as blank. It is not waiting, nor is it a decorative posture of uniformity. If the wrist gives narrowly, the chest opens a little more shallowly; if the preparatory beat widens, the breath drawn in also becomes heavier. Before the first note has emerged, the sound has already had its weight changed once.

So some mistakes also arrive a little earlier than sound. The person who breathes early is already full of air, but the hand has not yet fallen, and can only press that breath against the chest for the moment; wait a little longer, and the first phrase comes out stiff instead. The person who breathes late begins singing before the air has settled, and the onset of the note seems to have been lightly grazed. From the audience, one only hears the opening roughen for an instant; in rehearsal, people know that rough edge did not suddenly grow there.

The finer point is that these treatments rarely leave traces that can be identified. If one person releases the breath by half an inch, the person beside them may not hear it; but they themselves know that breath has already gone a little stale. Breathing again will be late; not breathing again will be hard. Before the sound has entered, the body has already bent once between two bad choices.

This is not to say there is anything suspect about that instant. Without it, the chorus could not begin at all; if everyone followed only their own lungs, the first phrase would scatter. It is just that uniformity is not so mysterious. Sometimes it is only that the mistake has been pressed down in advance, before it has had time to become sound.

The truly tense place is often a little earlier than sound. The conductor’s hand is still suspended, and someone has already finished inhaling, left only to endure an extra half-second before the first beat.