'Tis the Reason for the Season

Today a light snow falls. Snowflakes alight on the earth between me and my 50 foot spruce tree, which sits in my backyard -protecting us from winter’s winds and summer’s rain. As the snow falls it is struck by the rising sun. There is a brilliant sparkle to these tiny flakes, perhaps nature is practicing for a later snowfall, which, inevitably, will fall. They dance in the sunlight. The light dusting of snow on the ground is a fitting beginning to December. I run to bring my husband, but the effect has gone. How fleeting these moments.

There is ebb and flow to the rhythms of the seasons, as there is to the rhythm of the events of our lives. As we prepare today for our Christmas concert I know that next week, with my intermediate students, we will begin our December rituals. We will speak of our holidays, our celebrations and the friends and family with whom we shall visit. For many of us old farts it means familiar rituals include making reacquaintance with our grown children, off doing whatever it is they they do. The symbols of December are similar to many cultures and traditions: light, candles, stars, the sound of laughter and singing. We all decorate and clean and prepare for the season in some fashion. My Muslim students have already regailed us with stories of the wonderful Eid-ul-fitr parties; gifts, money, celebrations -family and community coming together in a spirit of joy. Two of my students helped me decorate on Thursday in preparation for the festive season.We created a bond as we decorated our classroom, one of my girls clothed in her hajab. Such a promise of life and learning.

For me, Christmas always began with in the fall as we closed up our Muskoka cottage. Once we made it back to the city of Toronto mom began playing her Christmas Carols. It was something upon which we could depend. Comforting and reliable- a rite of fall. When I began to participate in choirs the rituals would include concerts and semi-amateur chamber vocal groups. In our choir we performed many difficult pieces, all sung sans sheet music! I still know the words to most of them. We memorized Messiah choruses, as we did with all of our music and, like an old woman who doesn’t remember her breakfast, but remembers vividly her first kiss - I still remember all the words. My first Messiah score was given to me in 1984 by my parents. The very people who had chosen me in the adoption process based on my musical background.

Many of our Gen Y young people have performed Handel's Messiah on an annual basis throughout their singing careers. It has saddened me, however, to hear them speak of their lack of fascination with the piece, in fact being “bored” with the whole process. I have heard this from several of these young adults who are seeking something “new and fresh”. In my life I have sought rituals and traditions to help me make it through each rite of passage. As a single mom, broke and raising three children, we tried to keep particular rituals going - others we could neither afford nor were we able to tolerate them in our new lives were changed and harmonized.

I hold Handel's Messiah to be one of those rituals to which I must hold fast. I remember my daughter singing the Hallelujah chorus with me as we played it on our turntable- I know some of you do not remember what this might be. I had the honour of listening to my daughter sing it as she participated in her young people’s choir. Having dragged my kids to the NAC many years in a row, to “watch mummy sing” it is a beautiful change of role. As I care for my ill parents I find it a hard task living in the sandwich generation. My mother and father, who can no longer sing in a choir, attended every single concert in which I sang in Toronto in my youth -but for one. It is a long-standing tradition in many families.my parents sang in church choirs all of their lives from tender adolecence to age 78. Cancer has slowed them down.

My husband and I were sitting talking about the story of Handel's Messiah. This man, who knows the entire score of The Sound Of Music [but isn’t allowed to sing it aloud] has attended Messiah performances for many years of his adult life. He has a hearing loss and while he cannot appreciate all of the nuances of the music, and he is an agnostic to boot, he often attends Messiah performances. He perceives Handel's Messiah as he does many other stories. We attended a performance of Anne and Gilbert, suspending disbelief as we watched my son play one of the roles in this long-standing story of PEI, Jesse being an aspiring BFA student and actor. I was as enthusiastic watching my parents perform in Toronto amateur performances of Gilbert and Sullivan as seeing my son on the Victoria stage. It is an event, which, like a good book or a play, takes us out of our daily chores and routines, gives us a moment when we explore the human condition, feel some of the human spirtit and laugh at its follies.

We spoke of the ebb and flow of the story of Messiah, for indeed there is a story. There are the rhythms, harmonies, pictures and themes, all which paint a canvas of love. There is a co-operation, and a synergy to the experience of choir, soloists and orchestra all coming together at the same time in the same place, after weeks of independent rehearsals under the baton of yet another conductor. The composer’s face is painted in this portraiture of sound, humanity and beliefs. For many years it was only the rich who could afford to commission these works, those with money and power which were tied up in that knot of church and state. In the huge visual art works of the time, the artist often painted his face in the subjects, something a guide pointed out at the Louvre during our post-honeymoom visit in 2004. The same is true of Baroque music. The composers live on in the recreation of their works.

The score heard in Handel’s head, written down by the parts of the whole, broken down based on the pitch and range of the instruments, carefully chosen assignments of shape, feelings and genius. Each instrument carefully selected - for certain burdens upon whose shoulders the task was placed. The woodwinds, for example, assigned the delivery of “For Unto Us a Child is Born” would likely be sucking oxygen before the end of the second phrase.

The percussion section, often undervalued, just amazes the listener. Having stood behind the timpani section for many years, feeling somewhat the voyeur, we sopranos watch as the artist sits around for many, many rests, not really resting, but ready to pop up to the instruments at the right time and place in the music. When pregnant with child number two, now a singer and actor, he would begin to dance in utero when he knew the percussion was begin its statement. Fond memories -if uncomfortable ones, indeed. The little twerp weighed in at ten and a half pounds! It was Brian Law who declared, “You don’t have to sing as if you are actively going through the whole birth process.” – of course this is an OLD joke!!!

As we slide into yet another Christmas season, I look at it with fresh eyes and ears. Mathew Larkin has shaped our vision as we work through the piece. I look forward to the baton of another maestro, the esteemed Dr. Julian Wachner, for example. His take on the work brought another perspective to the foreground and the backgrounds of the parts of the whole. The margins of my scores are filled with the marginalia of the good chorister, as she dutifuly writes in each direction of the next interpretation. The sonority and texture of the piece is shaped in detail. I looke forward to its completion. My husband, daughter and husband, as well as actor-son will be in attendance. A spirit of celebration and honour for those who have come before.

We have the honour of singing with the Cantabile singers during this year’s Christmas concert. These young people, much better trained than we were in our youth, their voices ring true across the church space. They sing with a grace I could never have mustered; a shy, scared young girl with the all the confidence of a carefully greenhoused wallflower. Our children have many more experiences available to them than we did. They have better trained conductors, vocal teachers, and performance opportunities with musicians whose very spirits convey their knowledge and expertise through osmosis.

What is amazing, and a great relief, is that these young people are not attached to their computers of video games. They are investing their time and energy in developing a part of their spirit. Their faces shine as they seek to paint a song in our hearts this Christmas season. I hope you, too, find your seasonal rituals as we approach the winter solstice. For it is a celebration that has occurred for many years. One cannot help but learn from conductors such as Matthew Larkin who shape each sound, plausive, and tone with the quality of his genious. Some of us possessing only chronological genious, can appreciate the love and the care with which our choir is shaped. We hope to "sing on the stick" and rise to his baton. We, as amateurs, are on worthy of the task and still we rise.

Jennifer Jilks