I can't harmonize by instinct.....so my sense of harmony is pretty much limited to hearing it. One image that has stuck in my mind through the years involves a hymn sung at the midnight Christmas mass every year by a friend of the family. She would do a high descant - and to me it always seemed to be a dove flying high over the rest of the music.

She would sing the descant only to one verse and ONLY at the Christmas service. For years that "made" Christmas for me, and I still "hear" it, and see the dove fly every Christmas;though the singer died twenty-some years ago.