Tis now the late evening on the first Sunday of Advent and I am grateful to God for a beautiful experience of a day. I worshiped this morning in a church where the aesthetically beautiful was all the proclamation needed; I made scones for my daughter and myself; and I sang in the soprano section of the chorus in Mid America Nazarene University's presentation of Handel's Messiah. I was invited to do so by Dr. Dennis Crocker, chairman of the fine arts program there, who was once the choir director at Broadway UMC where I pastored. I could say many marvelous things about Dennis---and they would almost all be true. ;-). Over this past week, as I attempted to get my choral voice back during rehearsals (where DID those top four notes on my register GO???), I could not help but think about other Messiah performances I have known:
In 1966, age 11, I attended the every-four-year performance of the Southern Illinois University Singers of the entire work. My mother and sister went, I believe, every time it was presented until my mother could go no more. I remember Shryock Auditorium being absolutely gorgeously decorated; I remember how LONG the performace was. I remember my mother loved it.
In 1974 I was in a Women's Vocal Ensemble class in the fall at SIU. Dr. Charles Taylor was the teacher. One early fall day, he came to class and said that Mr. K. (Robert Kingsbury, another SIU prof who was directing Messiah that year) wanted to come in and listen to us and see if any of the sopranos (there were four of us) would want to sing in the chorus---he was short on sopranos, it seemed. Mr. K came in, heard us and said he'd take all of us. Dr. Taylor, who also conducted the choir at First UMC in Carbondale said "Susan will be fine if she just raises her eyebrows on all notes above E" which I remember, and tried to do today, but it didn't work so well. What a trip it was to sing in that large choir--especially the rehearsals that year. Mr. K had a representation for being (God rest his soul) a bit of a prima donna? or would banty rooster be more like it? whose patience was very short--he dismissed a girl sitting next to me in rehearsal for not having a pencil and told her not to come back. Anyway, I learned the notes, sang my best. The performance was also the first time I ever sang on risers with chairs on them.
I think I probably sang in a Messiah Sing-In in Nashville while in school; I also sang in another Messiah Sing-In in Belleville IL when I sang with the Masterpiece Chorale (Community Chorus) the first real auditioned group I ever sang with, and I was told that I needed to breathe better, but because I could read music fairly well I was let in. I also sang it with the chorus at Culver Stockton College when I served the church in Canton MO in the early nineties; I believe I sang in yet another Messiah Sing In in Columbia; sang with the Broadway choir when it sang selections along with, I believe the Kirkwood choir sometime in the mid eighties and....well, you get the jist of it. Today I probably could have sung most of the chorales without music before me, with the exception of about 10 measures---just from having done it so much.
I do love the music so. In all the times I have sung and heard it, I have never enjoyed it as much as today. It truly was a spiritual experience, in the new gorgeous Bell Performing Center at Mid America (when you walk in the main entrance, your eye goes up ten feet or so around the wall, where, like the Preamle of the Constitution might be imprinted in the Captiol, in the Bell Center the words to O For A Thousand Tongues to Sing surround you.. those words reminded me and welcomed me in ways I cannot quite articulate when I saw them the first time); with prayer said after each rehearsal; with Dennis praying for us before the performance; with all the very kind and loving women "of a certain age" (meaning close to my age) who sat on the back row with me, several with lovely voices; with my sweet daughter sitting in the audience in her Christmas red lace blouse that I bought her as a surprise and her hair all up on her head and looking like Audrey Hepburn; with all of that, how can I keep from singing this marvelous night, when darkness came so early and the white $20 tree from Big Lots with its estate sale-50s bulbs and Cardinals ornaments on its little limbs stands 10 feet from the Danish Modern settee I sit upon? Tis a marvel, Messiah comes, not when we expect, but when we need. We wait, in a kind of sweet game of hide and seek, waiting and yet having already received the best Gift the world has ever known. Behold the Lamb of God. Hallelujah.
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