The first spiritual experience I had with classical, aka “good” according to my mother, music was in college sitting on one of the uncomfortable lecture hall seats with the pop-up desks that slid between the seats, ready to take notes on music. The first “lecture” was a piece of music played once, then again, and then again. In between the “hearings” the professor told us how to diagram the piece which was Wagner’s Overture to the opera, Tannhauser.
I was thrilled, not simply by the music itself, but by the fact that a grand piece of classical music could be diagrammed, just like a sentence can. Music, not just the elementary scales and practice books my boring and haughty first piano teacher used, but grand public music with thrills and trills, movements, transitions, themes with variations, rests, and punctuations.
As a writer, a lifelong devoted reader, and lover of words, I now heard that music could be read. I was also excited to know more about the music business of my maternal grandfather, known in NYC as “Pop” Adams. He was an impresario whose business with the Wolfson Bureau was to attract, import, and promote European classical music, vocal and orchestral, in the United States, where in the 1900s there was a dearth of classical music, vocal and orchestral. I never knew him because he died when Mom was twelve and I was unborn. Still, I felt as if I knew A.F. Adams through my immediate attraction to classical music, especially opera, with the exception of the occasional scorching soprano who could not blend.
Despite occasional flirtations with rock and roll and jazz, my love has stayed steady. We had season seats for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and now with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra whose conductor is the animated and vibrant Carolyn Khan.
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Wendy Gerbier, to us, is Auntie Wendy, a mezzo-soprano with a voice that soars with a slow die-out, like an echo. It stays with you. She is an ambassador of singers who have sung our national anthem at events, and has a three-octave range. Wendy is the aunt of my stepdaughter’s son. She recently performed a concert here in the auditorium at McLean Village Retirement Community. The listening audience sat still in awe and delight. You’re never too old for fine music, even if your ears don’t hear each note. Here we are (Dick Simeone and moi) after the concert, munching on brownies with Auntie Wendy with whom we munched on brownies, provided for the event which was open to the public.
Although Wendy Gerbier sings mostly operatic selections, she usually offers a program of varied selections, each with a bit of information about each piece. She opened this concert with two spiritual classics, the Schubert “Ave Maria” and the Malotte Lord’s Prayer, then continued with a mix of “a little bit of everything,” including “O Danny Boy” and Bernstein’s “Somewhere.” My favorite selection in this concert was Bésame Mucho, which is a bolero (Mexican dance tune), composed in 1932 by Consuelo Velazquez Torres, a female concert pianist. The words mean: “Kiss me Lots ’n Lots” Como si fuera esta la noche La última vez.". Kiss me as if this were our last night.” Both song and artist are important in the history of Latin music, a downright sexy and elegant way to flirt with song and gesture and coy desiring. Wendy sang it with her voice, danced it with her body, and lured us into the rhythms with her sway—seductive and alluring. Such is the universal language of music itself.
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What has this to do with one of the most difficult times in the life of Jesus of Nazareth? After he had spent hours in prayer and discerned that his mission would be to persuade his people that he had a messianic message of universal love, he withstood all the usual temptations at his disposal—wealth, power, and unbridled control—to choose the ways of peace, justice, compassion. That sounds promising and simple, but it was not. It cost him his life.
Temptations to betray such gracious love for all creation bombarded this Jewish preacher from many directions, even, and especially, from his closest disciples who failed to understand the depth and breadth of Divinity itself. He would have to be persuasive and totally human—have sex appeal— to lure people to follow his countercultural message.
Have you ever betrayed someone’s trust? Has anyone ever betrayed yours? Oh, let me confess the many ways. It is blindingly difficult to trust a love you cannot see or touch or hold onto and keep as a guarantee about your direction in life. All this and no profit with little salary.
It’s like flying blind. Or going to a symphony or opera when deaf. Or breathing in the scent of spring without the ability to smell. Or pretending to love with no heart. The last sense to go in death is that of touch. So hold a hand, and be present at the end if you can, because no one knows for sure if it is a beginning or an ending.
Ay, dios mio!
