This Week's Sneak Peek

I was hoping to find inspiration in any of the commercials or halftime show during the Superbowl last night. But I decided that having Rihanna's and her floating dancers targeted by U.S. fighter jets was just too damn mean to draw. 

Although I'm sure someone else has done it by now.

The musical performances were impressive, one way or another. Sheryl Lee Ralph gave a stirring rendition of "Lift Every Voice and Sing" (which has stirred up the hornets nest of Butthurt Right Wingers). I schedule the Black National Anthem every February, so we had sung it at Redeemer that morning — if not quite as slowly as Ms. Ralph's version. We did sing three verses of it to her one, however.

A few weeks ago, Daily Show guest host D.L. Hughley showed film of himself asking White people-on-the-street if they could sing the Black National Anthem; and I realized that while I could sit down at a piano and play it from memory, I wouldn't make it through the second line singing the words.

Which would at least save me the embarrassment of trying to hit the two pairs of high E's in every verse. 40 years ago, I could just barely hit the high E in the bass part of "Even So In Christ Shall All Be Made Alive" in Handel's Messiah, and that's just an eighth note at the top of a run up from a low A. In "Lift Every Voice," the high E's come as a climactic dotted quarter and a triplet in a song meant to be sung at a stately pace, and they're quite out of my range now.

I'd transpose the song down a step, but that puts the low notes out of the range of most sopranos and tenors. The song spans well over an octave, just one step less than "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Which makes Ms. Ralph's modulation up a step for the final two lines all the more impressive.