A Messiah

Last night I sang Handel's Messiah with a large chorus, chamber orchestra, and top-notch professional soloists at the cathedral. Our regular choir of about 25 people was augmented by members of two other local choirs to a total of about 55 singers. This photo, a composite of two taken by J. with my little camera, shows the conductor, Boris Brott, directing the audience when they stood and joined in the "Hallelujah Chorus." The concert was sold out, and it made me happy to look out at so many faces during the moving journey that this music offers. (The soloists, all of whom who sang brilliantly last night, were Nathalie Paulin, soprano; Daniel Taylor, counter-tenor/alto; Pascal Charbonneau, tenor; and Alexander Dobson, bass -- they're in a row behind Brott, joining us for the big chorus.) (I'm partially hidden by the big column, my face is just to the left of it, halfway up in the chorus, above and to the right of that bright light on the music stand.)

I've been thinking, during this season, about the words in the music we sing. On Sunday, before the regular service, Jonathan was at the back of the church when a woman came in and demanded, "Are there going to be Christmas hymns?" He was a little taken aback but showed her the service leaflet and said probably there would be some. "Well, if there aren't going to be Christmas hymns I'm leaving!" she retorted. She was probably a little disturbed, but her transparency seems like it expresses something that lurks beneath the surface in a lot of us. How much of the emotion of this season that's triggered by music is actually about religion, and how much is cultural? I wonder, and suspect most of it is really cultural as well as personal, touching deep memories and awakening expectations that are so complex that it's very hard for us to know what we're feeling and why.

Last night, singing Handel's text, much of it drawn from the prophesies in the book of Isaiah, I noticed all the promises about this "messiah," this "savior who is Christ the Lord." "Wonderful!  Counselor! The Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace." What is this? What are we saying? So many of the Christmas texts speak about peace: peace that will come when Jesus comes again, peace in the manger and under the stars, peace between the lamb and the lion, peace between human beings. And yet for 2000 years people have continued to fight terrible wars, many in the name of religion, and we're no closer to "peace on earth" than we were in Isaiah's time (8th C. B.C.E.) let alone the first century C.E.

Jesus, as a teacher, said much less about peace than he did about justice, particularly economic justice. He certainly spoke about loving one another; it was the author(s) of Isaiah, prophesying Judah's eventual release from Babylonian captivity, who wrote about beating swords into ploughshares. I can only imagine how appalled Jesus would be to see the scene above and hear himself glorified as "The Prince of Peace, King of Kings, and Lord of Lords." But the story and the words seem to touch something in us, some fundamental hope that Christmas, rolling around again in our lives, seems to represent: a hope that things will be better, that the people in our own lives will be kinder to one another, that we'll feel happier and more loved, that we'll find people to love ourselves, that the world will finally wake up. We say we're looking for a Messiah who will fix everything that's wrong in this broken world of ours, but really what we want to find in our lives is genuine love, and a sense that death is not an ending that renders our lives meaningless.

Toward the end of the service I noticed that one of the homeless men who sleep on the cathedral steps had come in and was standing near the back door, wrapped in a long beaten-up coat, a knitted hat still on his head. I was glad he'd been allowed to come in, and hoped there was something in the warmth and beauty of the performance that would ring true, not hollow, for him this season. But who's to say who's the most needy? There were plenty of faces in the audience of well-dressed people wearing a look of sadness mixed with expectation and hope. I often see this as we process out of the church after a service; there's no way to know what's going on in someone's head, or why they've come out on this particular day, or what they hope to find in the words or music or silence. I've been moved to tears by music so many times in my life, and often unexpectedly, that I know how much power it has to touch us and vibrate loose old feelings, new hopes, or pain we've carried for a long time. I was speaking of these things to one of the visiting choristers, a man I'd never met who was also happy to be singing last night, and he said, "Yes, I know exactly what you mean. And it reminds me that musicians do have an important role to play."

Comments

[Kim]

"We say we're looking for a Messiah who will fix everything that's wrong in this broken world of ours, but really what we want to find in our lives is genuine love, and a sense that death is not an ending that renders our lives meaningless."

Beth, this is a beautiful, perceptive, achingly hopeful sentence. I wish that I were close enough to have attended; however, I now will seek out something similar here in this town I call home. Surely I'll finding something appropriate here in the Bible Belt.

[dale]

Reading the biography of John Adams: somewhere he remarks impatiently that the perfectibility of mankind is hardly a new notion, it's been the opinion of Christianity from the git-go that individual human beings are perfectible. What's modern and off-base is the idea that it can happen in this world. (something like that. Much more elegantly phrased, of course)

(I'm finding Adams a tremendously sympathetic character, to my great surprise. Somewhere along the line I switched founding-father parties and became an Adams Federalist, I guess :->)

[Joyce]

Sitting in the audience last night at Messiah was such a wonderful gift.For a moment I was sitting in the pew and looking at all those familiar faces singing their hearts out.I felt such pride in what we offer to our city. It was thrilling! Thank you.

[Lucy]

Reading this after watching a magnificent Nine Lessons and Carols from Kings tonight, and so many of the thoughts you put into words here are hovering in my head.

Thanks Beth, and I hope you both have a very happy Christmas and a hopeful New Year.

(That's a very impressive picture, full of exciting space...)

[john]

Thanks for this and the wonderful photo.Your piece stirred memories;its strange what gets dredged up sometimes.Young and footloose a friend,subsequently the best man at my wedding now gone, and I on a whim drop in on christmas midnight mass in Mexico.The beautiful church was absolutely standing room packed but we sqeezed in along a wall.We are obviously not from there but we are welcomed.I couldn't follow the latin service but as it pulled the crowd into the celebration of the birth of Christ I couldn't help but join them and remember at one point being moved to tears.
Merry Christmas Beth and thanks for your writing throughout the year.It can't have been easy at times but you read and appreciated

[Natalie]

Wonderful photo and text, Beth, and nice to see that tiny glimpse of you behind the column. May this new year be a happy and creatively exciting one for you and Jonathan.