The Annual Messiah

It is the season in which musical organizations give annual performances of portions of Handel's Messiah. I sing in the Birmingham Concert Chorale, conducted by Philip Copeland, and we are the chorus for the Alabama Symphony Orchestra. We sing some part of Messiah every year, always with a different guest conductor. We gain from new understanding and insight each year, as a new conductor brings a new approach.

I was thinking back over some of these performances last weekend, as we engaged in this year's effort. I remember one year that the soloists who were performing with us were enjoying a lot of good-natured and humorous fun at one another's expense during rehearsals. I particularly remember the mezzo-soprano giving her recitative in which she quotes from Isaiah 35:5-6, "Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing." The funny part came on the last line, when she turned and glared directly at the tenor while pointedly singing, "and the tongue of the DUMB shall sing." We all enjoyed a good laugh at the tenor's expense.

Our ability to speed quickly over this passage of the musical work, as well as the scriptural utterance, demonstrates how easily the most radical of statements can become quite vernacular to us. I have been thinking about this passage in relation to people I know, and its truth seems nearer to me.

The choir I direct benefits from the loyal membership of a singer who is blind. She is a brilliant musician who has studied deeply, and learns faster by ear than others do by reading the music. Last summer she joined the entourage to Vienna, where we performed the Mozart Requiem. It was a great pleasure to see her spend hours touring museums and historical sites, frequently commenting on their beauty, which, like the music she "reads", is vivid in her mind's eye. I feel encouraged to know that it is only through her participation in the choir that such an opportunity would come to her. In a long concert like the Christmas music we presented a few days ago, almost everyone has a mental lapse or two, including the conductor. But this singer is absolutely reliable, because she sings music that is firmly and visibly planted in her mind, rather than on the pieces of paper in the other singers' folders.

Another singer I direct has been working hard to care for a spouse who has lost his hearing. Over many years he has continued to be an active participant in their busy lives by becoming an efficient lip-reader. With only a small percentage of hearing remaining in one ear, they chose to pursue a cochlear implant, even though the procedure presented a risk of losing the remaining hearing. On the first Sunday after the new apparatus was activated, he attended church to hear a solo by his beloved granddaughter. In the context of the church's Christmas music his miracle of hearing happened with little notice, but great joy.

At the same concert there was a player in the orchestra who is quite famous among those who play her instrument. She lives about 300 miles away, but honors us by traveling to play for our concerts every year. A few years ago she had a terrible accident, and suffered a debilitating loss of the use of one of her legs. At the urging of a mutual friend, I placed her name on our church's prayer list. After a great deal of pain and inconvenience, she has recovered, and is back to her normal hectic schedule. In a conversation after the concert, she told one of our members that she attributed our church's prayers for her regained health, and wouldn't miss an opportunity to come and play for us.

And finally, I've been thinking about one of the choir members who never misses a rehearsal or Sunday service. He affirms and enjoys those around him, and is integral to both the spirit and musical success of the choir. During the aforementioned Christmas concert, his wife was using sign language to "sing-along" on the congregational carols. Her voice is fine, but her memory is diminishing as she courageously journeys into the darkness of Alzheimer's Disease. She has told me that she learned sign language as a means of helping interpret for the hearing-impaired years ago, and that now she remembers the words of hymns and carols more accurately using that language. Her disease couldn't prevent her singing along because she had taken the time to learn to express herself in more than one language as a means of helping others understand.

These experiences surrounding the music of Christmas have reminded me that Isaiah's prophecy might not have been meant to describe a certain episode or person, but that there is always the possibility of the blind seeing vividly, the deaf hearing beautifully, the lame leaping unrestrained, and the person whose tongue is locked by an unseen jailer finding a way to sing for joy. I rejoice to think of the possibilities that might be presented were we to consider these radical predictions more often than once a year, and sing about them as if they were modern descriptions, rather than ancient mysteries.