Mozart on Norway Pond
How are things where you are? In the North, we are grinding our way through winter. It will not be long until spring. In the South, perhaps you are experiencing the influx of spring-breakers. It will not be long until the tourists and snowbirds go home. The sun is higher in the sky. The light does not hit the couch as it passes by the glass doors of the studio. Huckleberry has moved down to the rug to catch the rays. I can leave the thermostat at sixty and it will warm to seventy inside, no problem.
We got a lift here recently when Mozart rose from the dead in the form of an ensemble of sixty singers and accompanying musicians presenting his Requiem Mass, his final work, incomplete at the time of his death at the age of thirty-five and finished by Franz Xaver Süssmayr. Mozart's widow, Constanze, who curated Mozart's work after his death, maintained her late husband was deluded by sickness and frailty into believing he had been commissioned to write the requiem for his own passing, although the piece was really for a German Count named Franz von Walsegg to honor of his deceased, young wife.
If it has been a while, here are the first strains of the Introitus (click the play button below). Please imagine a few hundred of us snuggled in the simple white pews of the Congregational church in town, in wool skirts and brown trousers, flannel shirts, or cable knit sweaters. We have been outside carrying in wood, walking the dogs, ice fishing on the pond, watching children sled down the hill. We have left something on the stove or in the oven for dinner because Mozart is scheduled to come alive at four in the afternoon. The appearance will be brief, not much over an hour. The cars of the musicians and chorus have lined Main Street for a month in front of Jody Hill Simpson's house, the conjurer of this magic, the woman who over the years has turned our neighbors--the people we pass in the market, who we see at the dump--into something unexpected, something that should not belong here. Something from away, from a place like Germany, from people such as Dame Margaret Price, the Rundfunkchor Leipzig choir, Maestro, Peter Schreier, and the Dresden Orchestra. Something, believe me, that sounds like this:
Half the glory of eventually settling into one of the nooks and crannies of the world is the chance to spot treasure outside your door each morning. A pot at the end of the rainbow. Who does not know this? Retirement is the growth industry where we live and why not? We sometimes lament the aging demographic, the shortage of workforce, the lack of housing and the inherent problems of rural living, but tribute should be paid to the fact that after years of dues-paying and squeezing onto elevators, waiting in line, and rising early to meet the bus, there are places–small, quiet places like ours–that will receive you with a clap on the back, a hot cup of coffee and free newspaper to read while you relax. Gold.
Jody Hill Simpson and her husband, Rick, were easing off the fast lane more than a dozen years ago when they arrived here from Boston, where she had founded the children's chorus, PALS, in 1990 (now, Voices Boston). With a gift for coaxing wonderful sounds from people, young and old, who might not have discovered those gifts on their own, she rallied experienced and inexperienced choristers to be part of a new creation, Music on Norway Pond, to sing accompanied by world-class musicians from Boston and elsewhere. Ambitious programs have turned into more ambitious programs, augmented by more virtuoso artists from away, without losing sight of the fun that must be had, allowing the setting– our nook– to dictate the context of each performance: it is community art, after all. Home-grown, like our summer vegetables. So much better for you, body and soul.
Mozart was with us that day, regretting every other invitation from the concert halls of Europe and around the world. He sat in the balcony, stood behind the choir, waved his arms in time with Jody Hill Simpson and erupted into shouting and applause with everyone else at the end. The last I saw of him he was still on the front steps of the church, hugging and greeting everyone before they reluctantly headed home for their suppers, treasure in hand.
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