I’m looking at a 1,000 piece puzzle that is missing one piece.
One.
Probably you know this feeling – and the desire to tear apart the room to find the missing 1/2 square inch of cardboard.
Consider – that is only 0.1% of the puzzle. It is 99.9% complete with that piece missing. And yet it’s so utterly aggravating to be missing that one final piece.
What if you couldn’t see the missing piece, though? If your eyes were only acute enough to see 2/3 of the puzzle, you likely would have no idea a piece was missing, and you’d be thrilled to have the puzzle complete.
I think sometimes that we, as conductors, are working so hard to make sure that every last piece is put into our musical puzzles, but we are working to place pieces that our singers cannot hear. We are generally in possession of the keenest ears, and the most training, in the room. We are literally able to see more of the puzzle than everyone else.
Certainly we should get as much of the puzzle filled in as we can. But we also must spend equal time making sure that our singers can see as much of the puzzle as we can; then they’ll understand how incomplete the puzzle looks. Until then, they will not really commit to putting in pieces that they don’t even know are there.