So throw off your stupid cloak
Embrace all that you fear
For joy will conquer all despair
In my Blakean year
~ Patti Smith, "My Blakean Year"
In my Bachean year: I started Lent with the St. Matthew Passion, followed by the Mass in B Minor on Palm Sunday. Two weeks later, the City Choir of Washington D.C. performed Bach's Magnificat, and my presence was a moral imperative: road trip! I packed up my tame bassoonist and we crossed the country in her Prius.
The choir was also singing other works by other composers - Mozart, Charles Villiers Stanford, Luciano Beriot - but until I opened my program I hadn't realized that they were ALL settings of the Magnificat. It was an all-Magnificat concert!
***
As I understand it, music director Robert Shafer was a founder and the conductor of another choir in the city for many years. I knew he was a renowned choral director, but that's about it. Anyway, the story goes that he was dismissed by the Board one fine day, with a six-month noncompete agreement. Six months and one day later, 80 members of the choir walked out and formed the City Choir of Washington, and hired him. I expected great things of this choir, and I was not disappointed.
My notes from the Mozart read "nice dynamic range; crisp consonants, great attacks; don't like the soprano." (Reading this last observation, my companion mouthed, "I do!") The sound was really impressive and beautifully blended. I found it odd that the instrumentalists stood during the Mozart, but maybe that was because they had to clear out for the Stanford, which was accompanied "only" by organ.
The Stanford was too short for me. It felt like a choir anthem in church, and in fact it is half of the composer's Evening Service in G major (followed by the Nunc Dimittis, I believe). Instead of separate movements there is one unified piece, the soprano soloist gliding atop a wave of familiar, comfortable harmonies from the choir. Assistant Conductor Brian Bartoldus at the podium drew from the choir a rich tapestry of sound that supported without overwhelming. But long before I was ready for it, the lilting song paused for breath; and at the downbeat, all vocal meanderings converged and crescendoed into the "Gloria Patri." It felt like time to stand up and shake out your wrinkles and greet your neighbor.
***
From our perch in the balcony of the National Presbyterian Church - a dramatic white building with soaring carillon tower - we had a tremendous view of both choir and organist. (The other instrumentalists were a little crowded in front of the choir, and huddled behind music stands anyway, so I can't claim much of a view there.) Our choir connection had recommended watching the organist, Bill Neill, and especially his footwork on the pedals. I did this for a while, and later summed it up for the bassoonist: "Sometimes he would pick up a foot and put it on another pedal." This led to a really cool story about an organist in another place and time, who followed the Old World tradition of improvising accompaniment on a given stanza of every hymn. He once put the melody in the feet and visibly danced around the console. I don't doubt that Mr. Neill - organist and harpsichordist of the National Symphony and National Philharmonic - can do this, but I didn't see it.
... Probably because during the Berio I became smitten with the percussionist, who was playing both xylophone (in front of him) and timpani (behind him). And occasionally helping out with the high-hat cymbal when the snare drummer was busy elsewhere. He was turning all kinds of pages on all kinds of music stands, armed with various mallets and busier than a one-armed paperhanger.
***
Speaking of Old World traditions, we were informed by Maestro Shafer that after the intermission, it's traditional to repeat the piece played just before the intermission.* A choir member had complained bitterly that the Berio - both modern and unpleasant, it seemed - would be performed twice, but I never took this seriously. I thought they were performing it in two different concerts or something. But she meant it: they performed it twice in this concert; and Shafer introduced it so elaborately that a cold dread curled up in my belly and set up housekeeping. "It isn't as PRETTY as the Stanford," he confessed, and I - who had loved the Stanford - swallowed painfully. He explained that it had never been recorded, and he'd had it for years but kept feeling like the time wasn't right, but now he was ready. And that they would perform it again after the intermission. My niece whispered, "I may take a REALLY long intermission, if I don't like it."
"Prepare for dissonance," suggested the bassoonist, as the baton swung into action. And what I heard was not PRETTY, like the Stanford; but I wouldn't call it dissonance, exactly. It started with a vocal duet, soprano and mezzo-soprano (and sometime during this duet I realized that I really DID like the soprano). But the vocals were eerie, inhuman, like the call of the grey seal on the rocks, or possibly siren songs. Underneath, a very different rhythmic line was established by the woodwinds and eventually the choir contributed some precise, unpretty chanting.
It was hard to listen to, and at intermission I asked, "Why does it have to be so CREEPY?" This line got the same reaction it gets after Tim Burton movies - none - but my companion did remind me that the second time through, it would be more familiar. I thought of Mark's assertion that no one likes anything until the second time. And I hadn't really hated the piece, just didn't understand it.
***
Theological digression: the Magnificat is the Virgin Mary's song after she's been told that she will bear the Son of God. "My soul magnifies the Lord," she sings; "from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed." From Bach to Mozart to Stanford, we hear this interpreted as joy that cannot be contained, that bursts into effervescence and swelling crescendoes, trumpet voluntaries and the auditory equivalent of the lame leaping for joy. But ... but.
My mother once remarked, "I don't remember ever being exactly thrilled to find out I was pregnant." She was disgusted by some soppy "miracle of birth" spewings she'd heard from friends, not implying anything about my own arrival in her life. <pause> I don't think. Anyway. So ... what if Mary is singing to give herself courage? Less "Wow, how cool is this?!" and more "Holy crap, what am I going to do?!" Which, to be fair, is probably how anyone would feel upon learning they'd been impregnated by an incubus. You'd have to tell yourself, well, he's a really GOOD incubus, he is mighty and his name is holy, and I am TOTALLY unworthy and what on earth did he choose ME for?
The phrase, "And I am scared shitless," was evidently eradicated from early manuscripts.
But of all the male composers who set this familiar text to music, maybe Berio got it right. He has given us confusion and warring emotions, a pounding chant like a racing heartbeat, sonorous and melodious but unworldly vocals. Maybe it's so creepy because the circumstances are pretty scary. Awe-inspiring, yes. Terrifying, ditto. And then it finally all resolves into the "Gloria Patri," with a more traditional harmonic structure that settles over the audience like peace and acceptance.
I am waiting in a silent prayer
I am frightened by the load I bear
In a world as cold as stone
Must I walk this path alone?
Be with me now
Be with me now
~ Amy Grant, "Breath of Heaven (Mary's Song)"
***
It can't have been fun to sing, but it was a very effective and moving piece for the audience to hear. I wish it HAD been recorded so I could listen again and again, and start to hear how the pieces fit together.
But then the poor long-suffering choir, which had so valiantly performed this difficult piece TWICE, finally made it to the Bach Magnificat. My sister wondered whether she would hear the piece differently after the Berio - whether, in fact, the depth of the Berio would make the Bach seem all polished surface with no guts.
No worries. One of the beauties of music is that it is temporal, and vanishes when replaced by other sounds. Another is that everyone hears it differently and reacts differently. But the greatest beauty of Bach's Magnificat in D is ... Bach.
I remember when Boston's first album was a big hit, back in 1976-77. One of my friends complained that every song on the album sounded alike. "But I like that song," I said, "so that's fine with me." (Fourteen million airings of "that song" later, I hate the damn thing.) As I listen to Bach's Magnificat again and again, I hear precursors of the melodies and effects he used later in the B Minor Mass and the St. Matthew Passion, and I wonder if part of what I love is the familiarity. But just about the time you get complacent in the aria "Quia respexit humilitatem" ("For he hath regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden"), the choir startles you out of your reverie with the positively mischievous "Omnes, omnes generationes." The trick of stopping and then restarting the tune, followed by a finale-type progression on the strings, is so insouciant I could hear it as soundtrack for cartoons.
It was completely satisfying, invigorating. The choir said afterward that, exhausted as they were from rehearsals and performances, and as technically challenging as the piece is, they'd gladly sing the Bach again right then. I'm sure I speak for the entire audience when I say we'd gladly have heard it performed again. This is a Mary who throws back her head and CROWS, filling the air with her jubilation.
Jubilation is fun. And Bach even ends it with a joke, a musical pun: as the "Gloria Patri" reaches "as it was in the beginning," the music reverts to the opening musical setting: the wildly exultant "Magnificat."
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*After eighteen seconds of googling "repeating music after intermission" I am unable to verify this tradition, but I did turn up the intermission music for Monty Python and the Holy Grail, so it wasn't a complete waste.