Though I claw at empty air and feel
nothing, no embrace,
I have not plummeted.
—Denise Levertov, “Suspended”
Though the Mozart Requiem is commonly performed, I have never sung it before this performance. It is not the monumental aspect of the piece that intimidates me as much as my aching need to sing it, an ache approaching pain. And I do not want to just sing it; even if I’m only a member of a large choir, I want to sing it well, to sing it for my dad, and for Kathy. The Mass for the Dead, or Missa pro defunctis, has been set to music many times, though Mozart’s setting is perhaps the best known. There is much conjecture about the composition of the Requiem, but most historians agree that it was an opportunity for Mozart to find a new direction and depth in his music. As he began working full time on the Requiem in October of 1791, Mozart had premonitions that he was composing the Requiem for his own death. Immersing himself with fervor into his work, he fell gravely ill, and he died in December, his Requiem unfinished. His colleague, Franz Xaver Sussmayr, had to finish it for him. Even the best among us die with unfinished business. Even the least among us, I hope, have someone who will try to finish it for them. That, at least, is how I understand it.
The primacy of the chorus in the Mozart Requiem gives us more time to rehearse with Maestro Perlman than we might have had with another work. He rolls into our first rehearsal in his wheelchair, and I am astounded. Hearing Perlman play in numerous recordings, I have been awed by his utter mastery of the music, the passion of his performance. I had not known he was disabled. That man who conveyed the depths of passion in his work had been struck with polio at age four. And yet the energy and vigor he brings into the room exceeds that of an athlete.
Rehearsals for me are another mountain ascent. I go in with my red water bottle, feeling the grains of fine Hulahula sand in my teeth and questioning my sanity at trying to connect with Dad and Kathy through music and sand from the river. The powerful harmonies nestle into my head and heart and voice, pull me again and again through Latin liturgy, straighten the paths of my grief, soothe the inflammation of my soul.
Music philosopher Peter Kivy admits failure in explaining the importance of music. But he sees the performance of music as a ritual of community, “the sense of cooperatively wresting order from chaos.”7 The performance of music “literally makes one able to hear what to others is inaudible.”8
Maybe it is the communal nature of the performance of universal harmonies that I so yearn for. The sense of community in grief coming from all of humanity’s worship of the divine. The connection to all of humankind in our shared belief that there is meaning, and that there is something more. This connection reminds me that I am alive. It is the reason I cannot sit at my piano alone, but need to stand and sing the Requiem, one of many voices singing, to access a sense of hope in myself I cannot otherwise express. Though I cannot find the quiet spaces of my heart to hear God, singing gives me a structure to reach for that connection to him, to feel I am one of many voices working together, inadequate alone but important as a part. The doing and the discipline have a place. They have a place when the quiet places elude us. They have a place in bringing us back to silence, to the symphony of the universe.
Dad’s older sister, Aunt Georgia, comes to visit from Arizona the weekend of the concert, along with my cousins Jamie, Leslie, and Shelby. George and Joanne come over from Port Ludlow as well. I hope Dad and Kathy know somehow that all of us pray the Requiem in whatever way we can.
Perlman’s direction combines the ferocity of a blizzard with the precision of a surgeon. The care he takes and the inspiration he brings to the performance pull me in like a vortex. There is a depth in him I have not experienced with other conductors. But his eyes also hold a deep kindness, a true love for the music, a love for those performing it with him. I follow him with all I have. I look to him as I looked to my father when I was a small child. I look to him as I look to God. I look to him for salvation. It is never good to put this much on a person, even on a master. We expect too much.