I hear that many residents in Newtown, Connecticut are taking their Christmas decorations down, and I have to admit that I haven’t been feeling much like celebrating either the last few days. In the rest of the country, though we are grieving and in disbelief, holiday festivities are happening as planned, and and I played a Christmas concert yesterday afternoon accompanying the Mendelssohn Club, a choir based here in Philadelphia. The yearly concert takes place in the beautiful St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Chestnut Hill. The church is always filled for the occasion and this year was no exception.
Perhaps it was my own sadness that cast a pallor over my vision as I looked out on those gathered there, but I could have sworn that I saw several people wiping tears from their eyes. I struggled to keep my own tears back – especially as the choir sang an a cappella hymn called Strannoye Rozhdestvo Videvshe by Sviridov, translated A Wondrous Birth. It is, of course, speaking about the miraculous birth of a baby who would bring light, hope, and life into to the world, but, perhaps due to it’s melancholy Russian nature, it sounded more like an anguished plea and lament, even through the Alleluyas.
There is a quote going around Facebook by Leonard Bernstein: “This will be our reply to violence. To make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.” I know that I am not alone when I say that this feels empty to me right now. Music is absolutely not enough. Nothing is enough. I do feel however, that this music is worth listening to, not because it will make anything better, but because perhaps it can provide a a place for us – while we mourn, our Christmas lights dark – to sit and wait and watch together for the day when peace might finally come and new life will emerge. It may not come this December 25 for many – or even next December 25 – but we can be together, and (I hope) ultimately work together, to make way for the light. This is, after all, the truest meaning of Christmas.
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