Things start solidly in the benign column. I decide to drive despite having sworn I would never be behind the wheel of any vehicle in the District, especially when forced to travel an unfamiliar route. In this case, unfamiliar does not look difficult. The route that pops up on Mapquest appears to be straightforward. Seven miles from our front door to the concert venue. Two major turns. Long stretches on the same roads. But the minute I make the first turn onto M Street in Georgetown off the Key Bridge, I remember why I do not drive in DC.
Traffic is moving at a funereal pace. Appropriate, I concede, for the evening's entertainment. I can feel my blood pressure rising. Cars inch forward, crammed bumper to bumper in both directions. The good citizens of early America did not plan the streets of Georgetown for 21st century Saturday night traffic and hordes of pedestrians on an early March evening. Dodging oncoming cars and disoriented tourists, we surge through the intersection at Wisconsin Avenue, our second turn, and triumphantly come to a complete stop for what seems like five minutes while the driver of an SUV the size of a battleship learns to parallel park a block ahead.
Barb is waiting on the steps, alone, tickets in hand. The concert has started. Every seat in the nave and both outside aisles is occupied. Our seats are in the south balcony, high above the transept looking down on the choir and orchestra. Ushers direct us to a passage in the empty baptistry in one arm of the transept and we circle upwards, one dizzying step at a time, ascending a stone stairwell. A vision of skeletons in a turret prison crosses my mind as we make what seems a fifth or sixth spiral. When we finally emerge it is into a maze of doors and passageways. We pick the most likely and thankfully emerge onto the balcony. Peeking into my program I find the choir is performing Song of Wisdom by Charles Villiers Stanford, a short work for chorus and organ. When it ends and the audience applauds, we are ushered to our seats.
The concert, we discover from the program, is in two parts. The first features ten short choral pieces by familiar, unfamiliar (like Stanford), and unexpected composers. Most appear to be sacred music. Haydn, Vivaldi, Purcells, Handel and Mozart pieces all bear distinctive elements that a classical music buff could recognize and use to identify the composer. I enjoy the trumpets in Handel's Let the bright seraphim. One of the soloists, soprano Rosa Lamoreaux, has an especially clear and sweet voice. A choral and organ number by Pablo Casals (the unexpected composer), titled Nigra sum, fills the vast cathedral with beautiful minor harmonies.
After intermission, the Requiem begins. It features choir, orchestra and soloists--soprano Lamoreaux; mezzo soprano Julia Mintzer, a fiery-looking sylph with curly, auburn, waist-length hair; tenor, Eric Barry; and robust bass, Nathan Stark. Program notes thankfully include librettos for all of the evening's music. Since my Latin is as insubstantial as great Caesar's ghost, being able to read the English translation of each movement of the Requiem mass--which is in the church Latin of Mozart's day--adds a welcome dimension to my enjoyment of the piece. Isn't it grand to live in the age of information?
I know, like every pop culture hound who has seen the movie Amadeus, that Mozart was working on the Requiem while on his own deathbed, and that the piece was only about half completed. The movie version of events, with Salieri lurking in the vestibule, waiting to steal the composition and claim it as its own, I also know to be patently false. But, I do not know the real, more interesting story until reading the program notes.
Mozart's wife, Constanze, was keenly aware that her husband's death presented complications. Now he would be unable to finish the Requiem, which had been commissioned by Count Franz von Walsegg (who, like Salieri in the movie, was himself was a notorious thief of other composer's works). Stanze needed payment from Walsegg to reduce the mountain of debt left her by her beloved. But he would only pay for a completed piece. She called on one of her husband's trusted colleagues, Joseph Eybler, to finish it using Mozart's remaining notes and fragments. But, Eybler backed out quickly, so she instead recruited, Franz Xaver Sussmayr, one of Mozart's students, to finish the task. Not only did Sussmayr complete the Requiem, he did it in handwriting so like Mozart's that he was able to forge his mentor's name on the final copy. Constanze was no fool. Saving a copy for herself, she accepted payment for the completed piece, then arranged for a public performance of the Requiem before Walsegg had a chance to claim it as his own.
I have been to dozens of classical concerts and admit to having slept through a few, especially when the conductor finds it necessary to stop between each movement to adjust his suspenders and polish his baton, while the orchestra retunes and the soloists gargle. But in tonight's performance guest conductor Norman Scribner not only starts each section of the Requiem mass almost immediately after the previous one finishes, but also paces the music so that it feels, although somber, uplifting and almost joyous in places.
Knowing that Mozart's student had a hand in composing the second half of the Requiem, I listen for differences from the first. Most noticeable to my tin ear is the disparity in the complexity of musical lines intertwining with each other (referred to as contrapuntal by musicians). Sussmayr's sections fit with the tone of the whole, but they are noticeably less complex. A melody dominates. The other musical lines provide a workman-like harmony. Mozart's music, by contrast, playfully weaves together multiple voices and melodies in interesting harmonies. That is the overall impression I am left with at the end of the concert--the pleasure of hearing music that, no matter how familiar, sounds fresh and interesting. That is Mozart's gift.
When the concert ends, we descend a circular stairway and end up at a locked iron gate, peering helplessly out at the disassembling orchestra and choir. We retrace our steps to the balcony and descend again in the right stairwell. We find our car quickly in the garage and, since we are so close to the exit, manage to be one of the first to leave the Cathedral grounds. The traffic moves smoothly. The evening sky is clear. It has been a glorious evening. Despite the night's literal and metaphorical ups and downs and the fact that the Requiem is a musical reminder of our mortality, I feel almost refreshed, completely in harmony with things as they are, not as I wish them to be.
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