Winter begins at 10:27pm tonight.
Or so I thought. Because winter begins at the winter solstice, doesn’t it?
Recently I learned that there are multiple definitions, which makes sense. It gets wintery a long time before Dec. 21, after all. While the Solstice is the beginning of “Astronomical Winter”, there is also “Meteorological Winter” which began on December 1. The other three seasons have corresponding differences.
The point is, there are different ways of looking at the same thing, depending on your vantage point. And sometimes we forget that we even have a vantage point, that our perspective exists.
To give just one example: when I think about a vocal jazz group, I imagine a vocal ensemble that sings jazz harmony and explores improvisation. But other people don’t see it as a vocal ensemble – they see it as a jazz ensemble that happens to include voices. The difference might seem subtle but it profoundly affects everything about the ensembles’ relationship with their supporting organizations.
Another example: if your rubric for adjudicating a choir includes “fidelity to the score”, as some do, then you are going to have adjudicators listen from the perspective that all the information is in the score and we have to be faithful to it in our interpretation. Another perspective: that scores are starting points for music that expresses the intention of the composer along with the specifics of the ensemble, would require a different rubric.
All that is to say – remember that you are looking at the world from one vantage point, and that there are assumptions associated with it. Someone else might have a very different vantage point.