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November 9, 2002

“I am beholden to you
For your sweet music, this last night.
I do Protest my ears were never better fed
With such delightful pleasing harmony.”

So Shakespeare has Simonides say in PERICLES (Act II, Sc. v). That was my experience also last night when the Gulf Coast Symphony and the 100 voice Key Chorale presented Beethoven’s Symphony #9 – the Choral Symphony (Sara sings with the Key Chorale).

With Leif Bjarland conducting with complete vigorous command of the orchestra, chorus and soloists, I was transported to realms of mystery and exaltation. I am no musician; I cannot read music (some of you know the probable cause of such ignorance). But I am deeply moved by music, more frequently by the three “Bs” – Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, but also by a wide variety from Louis Armstrong to operatic choruses; and, yes, even the “golden oldies,” Glen Miller, e.g., and an occasional polka. Writing this has put an end to the “dry spell” in these musings, the cause of which I know.

I have been informed that Beethoven’s 9th is particularly difficult for choristers. Margery Dearden writes in the program notes [that] “Beethoven makes superhuman demands of his singer, carrying the sopranos into the stratosphere, and almost seems to abandon them up there....”

Beethoven held high the ideal, the hope, of human brotherhood ... found in Schiller’s “Ode to Joy,” the text for his superb musical paean to that dream of the human family.

The first verse reads:

“Joy, thou source of light immortal,
Daughter of Elysium,
Touched with fire to the portal
Of thy radiant shrine we come.
Thy pure magic frees all other
Held in custom’s rigid rings.
Men throughout the world are brothers
In the haven of thy wings.”

In our world of 2002, where the war drums beat, where hate is a spreading virus, and suspicion prevails, to hear the 9th, the “Choral”, is to take heart again that we will not wipe out our human family in a stupid, heedless Armageddon.