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beetigerLast night I did the only remembrance that made sense to me, emotionally – I sang. There were two choices of community events available in the area. The first was what was being called a “rolling Requiem”, which consisted of choirs in every time zone singing the Mozart Requiem Mass at 8:46 am on 9-11, local time. But the one in which I decided to participate was a community sing of the Brahms German Requiem.
I’ve always liked the Brahms Requiem, both conceptually, and musically. Although still drawn from Biblical texts about death and rebirth, it’s not a standard mass text. The idea was that it should be a German Requiem rather than a Latin one –a piece for the people, as it were. It has lots of really wonderful musical word-painting, making it pretty easy to tell what the music is talking about, even if you aren’t paying close attention to the text. And in any case, I know the piece well enough that I thought I’d be able to sing it in a meditative fashion.
It didn’t quite meet my expectations. In my mind I had this image of people coming together, sitting down quietly, and at 8:00 sharp the conductor’s baton rising, and the people singing, the orchestra playing. In reality, it was a mob scene. We had a little bit of a disagreement at the front door; I hadn’t preregistered correctly. They didn’t want to let Bard in to listen, as they’d advertised audience space but were likely to break the occupancy laws just with singers. (He snuck into the back of the alto section just before we started.)
There was lots of rah-rah welcoming everyone, and for the Arts Council to plug membership. The people giving speeches seemed confused about whether the event was supposed to be “wonderful” or not. But it felt more about patting the local arts community on the back, and less about catharsis and grief, than I had hoped. There was twenty minutes of practicing, and a quite-competent-compared-to-a-baseball game group rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner, before we began. But most disappointing to me was that they took an intermission halfway through. The ritualist in me just felt that as really wrong.
But I got pretty involved in the singing, even if I wasn’t able to achieve the meditative state I’d wanted, and it was probably much better for me than watching the news. It sounded relatively good, it felt good, and I wasn’t nearly as weepy afterwards as I’d been before.
I’ve always liked the Brahms Requiem, both conceptually, and musically. Although still drawn from Biblical texts about death and rebirth, it’s not a standard mass text. The idea was that it should be a German Requiem rather than a Latin one –a piece for the people, as it were. It has lots of really wonderful musical word-painting, making it pretty easy to tell what the music is talking about, even if you aren’t paying close attention to the text. And in any case, I know the piece well enough that I thought I’d be able to sing it in a meditative fashion.
It didn’t quite meet my expectations. In my mind I had this image of people coming together, sitting down quietly, and at 8:00 sharp the conductor’s baton rising, and the people singing, the orchestra playing. In reality, it was a mob scene. We had a little bit of a disagreement at the front door; I hadn’t preregistered correctly. They didn’t want to let Bard in to listen, as they’d advertised audience space but were likely to break the occupancy laws just with singers. (He snuck into the back of the alto section just before we started.)
There was lots of rah-rah welcoming everyone, and for the Arts Council to plug membership. The people giving speeches seemed confused about whether the event was supposed to be “wonderful” or not. But it felt more about patting the local arts community on the back, and less about catharsis and grief, than I had hoped. There was twenty minutes of practicing, and a quite-competent-compared-to-a-baseball game group rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner, before we began. But most disappointing to me was that they took an intermission halfway through. The ritualist in me just felt that as really wrong.
But I got pretty involved in the singing, even if I wasn’t able to achieve the meditative state I’d wanted, and it was probably much better for me than watching the news. It sounded relatively good, it felt good, and I wasn’t nearly as weepy afterwards as I’d been before.
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Date: 2002-09-12 09:41 am (UTC)I wasn't able to do the Rolling Requiem, even though I tried to find a way to do it for 3 months. The website was broken. Through craigslist I found a church with many groups coming to it to do the Requiem within a 20 minute drive, but the choir director never returned my phone call, so I just wasn't meant to do it. Probably just as well; I spent yesterday as much as "Just Another Day" as I could, and that's what I needed.
About a month ago I ran across a sing-along Brahms Requiem in Mountain View. My boyfriend went with me and we sang our guts out. I had sung the Requiem at Rice University years ago. The music touched me so deeply, and no one that I knew, including my then-boyfriend, would come to the performance. It remains in my mind one of the pinnacle nights of my life, and no one important to me was there to share it with me.
So my now-boyfriend broke that curse by coming with me and singing bass even though he hadn't sung in 10 years. Neither had I, but I've sung the Requiem in the car enough times over the years such that it was all a fond reacquaintance for me.
We had an amazing conductor--one of those people who knows how to get what she wants out of her charges, who knows just when to cajole, to mildly scold, and to praise. At the beginning she said that this was the only time this choir would sing together--this particular group of people would never be assembled again--and that we needed to make it count.
There was that feeling of oneness, that magnificent feeling that only happens once in a while. And we were good. It was a deeply emotionally fulfilling night for me.
I say that not to taunt you but to say that I really understand what you wanted to get out of last night, and to let you know that at least one person out here of similar mind did have that experience recently, and that I hope that I can somehow share my own happiness with you.
It's just so cool to find a fellow Brahms' Requiem lover.