For some time I have been included as a participant at this year’s Spirit and Place Festival in Indianapolis. I will be part of a panel slated to talk about music and grief, in connection with a performance of John Rutter’s beautiful Requiem.
At the time I got involved, I obviously didn’t anticipate that my father would die on October 18th, not long before this event. My thoughts on this topic have quickly been transformed from abstract thoughts about the Bible, music, lament, and expression and processing of emotion, to something much more concrete. As it happened, my family had tickets for a concert the day after my father died. It featured music by composers who were immigrants to the United States, including some of my favorites (Korngold, Rozsa, Waxman) and a powerful musical setting of testimonies of arrivals through Ellis Island by Peter Boyer. It was what I needed at that moment. Music can be cathartic. But it is interesting to reflect on how the combination of music and sacred words can bring comfort even to those who may not be personally religious. Rutter is an agnostic, but one who has composed a lot of settings of sacred texts. The first movement captures so many of the musical elements that one longs for in a time of grief: confusion, sadness, calm, comfort, hope. The combination of music and words seems to parallel the journey from creation to new creation, from the beginning of the Book of Genesis to the end of the Book of Revelation.
If you can make it, please do come to the session “Restorations & Requiems: Finding Strength through Music, Art, & Faith” which includes an art exhibit, the panel discussion, the performance of Rutter’s Requiem, and a reception. This all beings at 1pm on Sunday, November 3rd, at Central Christian Church, 701 N. Delaware St., Indianapolis, IN 46204. I hope you can make it.
If you’ve never listened to Rutter’s Requiem, you can find more than one recording on YouTube:
Here is a performance with the composer himself conducting:
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