A Memory of A Christmas Past

I was reading Episcopal Café today and ran across this entry at the Daily Episcopalian. Something Dr. Kathleen Henderson Staudt said at the outset sent an unexpected surge of memory down my synapses:

A recording of Messiah was the first “adult” Christmas present I remember receiving. I was 16, and had sung a few choruses from Messiah in high school chorus. My parents gave me the Robert Shaw Chorale’s performance, my very own – probably the first classical album I owned, too. I cried when I opened it. I hadn't realized how much I really wanted to be able to listen to this music.

I grew up in a good Southern Baptist household where hymns were learned in church and Lawrence Welk's program was a staple on Saturday night. Some tunes became familiar through my piano lessons but those were mostly Strauss waltzes and the like.

When I was about nine I was reading a book of stories and one of the stories was about a boy who was in a choir which was to sing Messiah at Christmas. I don't remember any more of the story than that, really, but I do most vividly remember wondering what this marvelous music was and wanting very badly to hear it.  That year I asked for my own recording of Messiah and, Christmas morning, there was a copy done by the Huddersfield Choral Society. I couldn't wait to put it on the record player (that was what we had back about 55 years ago) and when I heard it, it opened up a whole new world of sound and music.  Like Staudt, it was my first classical recording, my first "adult" record and is still one of my favorite works.  It "spoke" to a nine-year-old in a very clear and direct way.

What a way to be introduced to the world of classical music.  No, the Strauss waltzes I had to learn in my piano lessons didn't count, nor did Beethoven's Für Elise. Like Staudt, the libretto was pretty familiar since it was Biblical text and Suthun Babdists (as it's usually pronounced) LOVE Biblical texts.  The recitatives were okay, like short bursts of speech in between the melodiousness of the arias but the choruses ---- oh, my, the choruses with their runs and harmonies and counterpoint.  They made my heart soar and they still do. 

Mostly I hear Messiah at Christmastime but some places save it until Easter because Messiah doesn't end with the Hallelujah Chorus, as glorious as it is. Still, whether I hear all or part of it, I respond to it.

Sometimes it amazes me how one small, seemingly unimportant thing like reading a story about a boy in a choir singing a great oratorio can seem to reach out and touch something within that grows and develops into a passion.  Oh, possibly I'd have stumbled onto something classical that would have done the same thing.  I confess to having gone through an "Elvis" phase as well as the rock-n-roll music of the late 50s and early 60s, but nothing "stuck" like this has.  It never ceases to amaze me, though, that something written in the 1700s could still speak so clearly and directly to my heart and soul also reaches the hearts and souls of others who don't always share my penchant for Baroque music. I guess it serves to remind me that inspiration is timeless, be it literature, scripture, music or a combination of all three.

I think Messiah will be on my playlist for tomorrow.