Vocabulary. Introducing....Descant

Descant--An additional melody sung above the principal melody.

Marie and her husband, Charles, had purhased tickets to see their 9-year old son sing in the choir. The children's choir sang a dull tune for quite a long time. The tune kept repeating, over and over, and it got very boring after a few minutes. Marie began to get a headache. It was a good thing she had packed a few aspirin...She had known this would happen. The choir went on and on. In the front of the choir, a woman dressed in a flowing velvet dress began singing beautiful, impossibly high notes. She was singing a different kind of melody...an undescribable melody. The choir was singing very, very low notes...still the same tune. Her voice was thrilling, and cracked through the air like ice. It was a musically complex descant that took everybody's breath away. Marie's headache went right away without the aspirin she had begun to unwrap. Everyone sat still, in awe. The woman singing the descant ended on a long C, and the choir stopped. The audience sat still for a moment, then the silence was broken with thunderous clapping that went on for a long time.