Last night I had the privilege of listening to the Mozart Requiem performed at the Rockefeller Memorial Chapel in Chicago performed by the Motet Choir, Rockefeller Chapel Choir and Orchestra conducted by James Kallenbach.  The Requiem is not an often-played piece, and in this instance, the performance was “…created ..as an act of mourning for the lives lost to violence every year on the streets of Chicago, in our neighborhoods and in our schools.  We planned also to remember those who died at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, fourteen years ago today.  Now we remember too those who died on the streets of Boston this week, and those whose suffering has just begun in the aftermath of this past Monday’s bombings.  We dedicate this evening to them all, and we make music for them and for our children, yearning for a more peaceful future.”  This was the context in which we also heard selections such as “Salvator Mundi” from Herbert Howells, the Kyrie from the Mass, by Frank Martin, “Even When God Is Silent”, from Michael Horvit, and “They Get It” from Ted Hearne’s Privilege and Mozart’s magnificent unfinished Requiem, as completed by Franz Sussmar and using the Franz Beyer (“Mozartian”) edition.

 

 

Last night’s audience was highly diverse in age, race and ethnicity-like much of Chicago-one of the many things I’ve come to treasure about this city.  There were very very many people at least 50 years old and many far beyond that.  I noticed women with grey and white hair wearing boots, stylish earrings and scarves, and confident expressions.  They did not cower but they strode purposefully.  I remembered in Atlanta where the more advanced in years were shuttled into certain living arrangements.  I remember the frail souls who would tentatively approach a door and wait for someone to open it.  They would wait for someone to come by and move their wheelchair, or bring them a glass of water.  Waiting for the next moment to move forward-so that their very lives could.

 

 

Tonight the elders, or anciens, the advanced members of our society waited for no one.  The waited only for the pleasure of hearing this exquisite music.  Some audience members were proud grandparents of the performing choir-and the parents were also well-represented, looking anxiously through binoculars, snapping cell phone pictures and otherwise striving to preserve the moments of the performance.  Yet there were a great number of very young people (especially in the choir itself) and everyone was mingling and chatting.  If the same group were at a party or in someone’s very large home you might have thought there was a family reunion going on, minus the very small children.  There was an air of great expectation to hear these musical treasures.

 

Finally the lights were dimmed thrice to begin the performance.  All was silent-then-for a solid five minutes-were the solemn chiming of the church bells to mourn the dead.  Discreetly elder patrons produced handkerchiefs, tissues.  I saw a woman quickly cross herself and a man who folded his hands in silent prayer.  The young blonde college woman with a large backpack who sat next to us furtively dabbed at her eyes.  By the end of the first section/last piece,”Hear my Prayer O Lord”…it seemed that the almost-wailing, and finally, grumbling and dissolving of the plea, had knit us all into a fully integrated whole.

Words from Mozart’s letters were read as periodic narration between the pieces.  The words from them were not so very different from letters any one of us received during someone’s lifetime-a lament for a recently deceased relative, the apprehension Mozart’s sister-in-law felt approaching his deathbed-and then-her recounting of how even as he died, he was trying to articulate a choral piece from the Requiem.  Suddenly-we felt the presence of these family members in the room as immediately as the people sitting around us.  We were living their story and Mozart’s music was speaking to them as well as it was to us.  I shot a glance at the blonde student during the Requiem’s Lacrimosa.  Tears fell from her face to echo the music’s lyrics: ‘That day will be one of weeping….”  I gave her some tissue from my purse.  I will not forget the look on her face when she took it-such abject grief.  Was one of the dead a friend, a boyfriend, a sister, a mother, a father?  I will never know the answer to that question.  I don’t need to.

 

 

Like the Requiem itself-the night was incomplete-but breathtaking….a cosmic journey just beginning.  We exited the chapel’s heavy wooden doors exhaling hope-and breathing it in, yet again-just as eagerly-because it felt fresher than the night air.  It felt real, as if we could reach out and touch it.  We left daring to believe that things would, could, somehow, get better-if only we could keep sharing.  This knit feeling-that we could even feel this at a public concert-this, this togetherness-is what we all must have.  We need each other.

 

What if there were concerned and involved community members available for the young man who perpetrated the Columbine deaths?  For each of the gunfire victims-how had those confrontations taken place?  How long did it take for each of them to die-and how many of their surviving family members knew what got them to their respective places of death?  If only that family from Chechnya had a family to which they belonged in their new community.  What if the mother, the father-had reached out?  What if there had been safe places for everyone to express anger, discontent, and be listened to?

 

 

If, as so many people say in these times, this country is failing…I do not for a minute believe it  is because of our diversity or our inability to deal with it.  I believe it is more, ironically, due to what propelled people to come here to build this nation…the desire to do things one’s own way, to find one’s own path.  Somehow that need has trumped all and begun to eclipse the need for other human beings…the striving to prove something, make a point, to establish superiority over another human being. 

 

We need to end this isolationism-right now.  We need each other.  We need each other, now, more than ever.  We need to reform the continent anew, not make more islands of it.

 

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