Cultural Facets

by Gwendoline Fortune

Personal, sensory satisfaction can seem to come from a different and deep part of a person--from having walked where Mozart was born and lived, where Bach conducted and is buried and where Mendelssohn loved and composed. No longer pictures in books, films or lectures, I entered a variant stream of human experience. Contemplating the disputation of Martin Luther in 1519 and the burning of Jon Huss on the actual sites encouraged me to contemplate the mystical, collective unconscious in which I participate. The Elbe, the Danube, the Rhine are really dark, running rivers, not clear, blue paintings.

My first, extended visit in Europe was the occasion of a concert tour with The Classic Chorale, a volunteer group of professionally trained singers from the northern suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. Because of limited opportunities to earn our daily bread in our homeland, we paid our own expenses to sing in the great churches and halls of Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia.

Our purpose was a paean to music from a tradition that has been given to us and means much. Our pinnacle was to sing a Bach cantata in Bach's own church, Thomaskirche in Leipzig. It was a holy instant for me to stand in the first soprano row of the choir loft where hundreds of years of choirboys had worn the wooden floor smooth and bowed, to "see" Maestro Bach not our conductor, whom we chose to address as Herr Jacobs in that special place.

Twenty-six men and women, whose love and years of study were devoted to an expression of love and need from their essence, were, momentarily, fulfilled. We are called "amateurs" because we do not earn our daily bread by our music. In every case the time and energy devoted to the art and craft of music was equal to or more than what had been given to such as accounting and history.

We lived a series of musical adventures. We broke into song in restaurants, beer gardens and market squares. We performed a dozen scheduled concerts, but the pleasure on the faces of unsuspecting diners and strollers was most rewarding.

In the village square at Rothenberg we were followed back to our hotel by a crowd who heard us as we sang beneath the historic clock at midnight. They begged us to continue. After supper in a beer garden in Prague we alternated songs with German tourists -- who have learned to sing "in parts" from childhood. From secluded rooms customers came to the doorway, then lined the walk outside as we left, applauding, bowing and smiling.

Protestant and Catholic churches and cathedrals enfolded us as we raised our gifts in awe and joy. It appeared odd that we were permitted to sing folk and contemporary songs in a Catholic church, but were not permitted to sing "non-sacred" music in a Lutheran one.

Revolution, wasn't it?

We dared to sing an Agnus Dei and O Vos Omnes under the magnificent dome of St Vitus Cathedral in Prague. Governmental officials had refused us a concert; our programs were, essentially, sacred. I asked Conductor Jacobs why we had not prepared a complementary secular program. He hadn't thought of it, he said. "Going to Communist countries," I responded in surprise. We had many secular numbers. He didn't pack them.

The years of, I will say, unappreciated effort in our home country were healed by spontaneous comments such as from a woman in one audience who grasped the hands of several singers and beamed with gleaming eyes, "In all of Salzburg there are not such clear voices." The final, moving moment came from the audience of American servicemen and their families in the Interdenominational Chapel at the US Army Base in Frankfort. We basked in a standing ovation.

Memories and remembrances, learning and judgment -- all are valid depending upon where one stands in one moment in time, space and vision.