If you don’t believe in a higher power, performances like Saturday’s Harmonium concert might make you rethink the question.
The ethereal beauty of so many voices soaring to the heavens, creating a sum so much greater than the parts, inspired by contemplation of the divine… transcends everyday human experience and suggests something more.
Maybe for brief moments, we are divine.
(Nanoseconds, in the case of the chattering family behind me and the young lady on her cellphone.)
The Harmonium Choral Society brought chills during the first half of its New Earth program at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Morristown, opening with the majestic Earth Song by Frank Ticheli followed by Rossi’s Keter, Monteverdi’s Magnificat and Benjamin Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb.
The second half featured Cantata for the Animals, a work that Harmonium director Anne Matlack commissioned in 1996. It’s the Nativity story, as told by animals around the stable. Anne’s husband, Jabez Van Cleef, purposely kept the lyrics simple, so listeners of all ages–and all religious and nonreligious beliefs–could appreciate them.
Released from the stable, the cows celebrate their temporary escape from bondage with these disarmingly poignant lines:
Now let us praise this famous Man
With all his creatures and his clan,
And let us do the best we can
To end no worse than we began.
In his program notes, Jabez cites Wordsworth’s belief that universal truths are best expressed using plain language to describe ordinary people and events.
“Plain language is the best way to reach ordinary people,” agrees Jabez, who has written 35 books about religion and human rights. “I think some poets make language more obscure and complicated than it needs to be as a way of including themselves in the understanding and excluding others.”
(He might have added legislators to the list.)
Composer Elliot Levine’s melodies and harmonies are lovely, especially for the songs of the Cows and the Spider and Worms.
Check them out here.
ALSO SEE:
The next ‘Messiah’? Harmonium goes for it with ‘Cantata for the Animals’
