Singularly Breathing Together [Again]

This is a repost of the relevant section from my July 20, 2008 post, about a Conspirare experience:

[...]
What I am posting about today is one of my favorite groups of people, namely, Conspirare, the professional choral group with which I sing and with which I am traveling to Copenhagen for the 8th World Symposium on Choral Music this week.

In order to prepare for the Symposium concerts, the 30+ of us gathered in Austin this weekend to touch up the memorized version of the program we sang in January in Austin and San Antonio.

[Let me say this off the bat in case any of my students are reading this. Conspirare usually performs its concerts from scores, that is to say, un-memorized. While it has been a challenge for some of us who are unused to memorizing concert music, I think we all agree that it makes for far more immediate and fulfilling music-making once the task is achieved.]

I want to share with you a particularly unexpected and deeply moving moment from this afternoon's rehearsal. One of the songs we're performing is "Soneto de la Noche," the second piece in a triptych by Morten Lauridsen to a text by Pablo Neruda.

As a group, we have had experience with Neruda before. One of the commissions on the soon-to-be-released Conspirare CD of Tarik O'Regan's music is "Tal vez tenemos tiempo." (Shameless plug. Look for it in September. The title is Threshold of Night.)

I digress. We had all read the text of the piece, and some, who like me cannot memorize foreign texts without translating them (another hint to my students), were quite familiar with it. Be that as it may, most of us had a few spots tripping us up as we worked towards complete memorization.

It is a beautifully touching poem. I will include it here and hope it gets to stay (not for nothing have I learned how to cite sources in Grad School 2: The Return):

Cuando yo muero quiero tus manos en mis ojos:

quiero la luz y el trigo de tus manos amadas

pasar una vez más sobre me frescura:

sentir la suavidad que cambió mi destino.

Quiero que vivas mientras yo, dormido, te espero,

quiero que tus oídos sigan oyendo el viento,

que huelas el aroma del mar que amamos juntos

y que sigas pisando la arena que pisamos.

Quiero quo lo que amo siga vivo

y a ti te amé y cante sobre todas las cosas,

por eso sigue tú floreciendo, florida,

para que alcanses todo lo que mi amor te ordena,

para que se pasee mi sombra por tu pelo,

para que así conozcan la razón de mi canto.

When I die, I want your hands upon my eyes:

I want the light and the wheat of your beloved hands

to pass their freshness over me one more time:

I want to feel the gentleness that changed my destiny.

I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep,

I want your ears to still hear the wind,

I want you to smell the scent of the sea we both loved

and to continue walking on the sand we walked on.

I want all that I love to keep on living,

and you whom I loved and sang above all things

to keep flowering into full bloom,

so that you can touch all that my love provides you,

so that my shadow may pass over your hair,

so that all may know the reason for my song.

 - Pablo Neruda, "Soneto LXXXIX" from Cien Sonetos de Amor (trans. Nicholas Lauridsen),in Morten Lauridsen, "Soneto de la Noche," Nocturnes. New York: Songs of Peer, Ltd./PeerMusic Classical, 2005.

This particular text caused more than one person to choke up or actually tear up at one point or another in the rehearsals. It is undeniably a touching text. But today was different.

Today locked it in for pretty much everyone. Craig (Hella Johnson), in his infinite wisdom, had us listen to the Spanish being spoken phrase by phrase, repeat the Spanish back, and listen to the same text spoken in the English translation. A brilliant pedagogical moment that is probably not unique to us, but here's the masterstroke: We then sang it, while one of our beloveds, David F. spoke the text over our singing.

No one was prepared for what came next. Maybe all of our defenses were broken down by 3 days of all day and into the night rehearsing. Maybe it was the combination of a powerful text, set powerfully by a master composer. Maybe it was the addition of that last layer of the same powerful text we were singing being rendered pitch perfectly by a reader we all love in a language we comprehend on a heart level, versus the head level of an acquired tongue. Maybe Mercury was in retrograde.

But almost to a one, the room erupted, spontaneously, in sniffles, sobs, hitched breaths. Tears streamed down faces-- even faces one never expected to see bathed in tears. It was not everyone at once, but nearly everyone by the end of the song. I  know some were shocked by their response. I know that I was.

In that moment we were all touched by something rare. Something ineffable. There is no way to know what each person experienced in that singular moment; although I believe its outward manifestation was the kind of deep intimacy one can experience in collaborative music. I do not believe that any of us left that room unchanged. I also believe that we will never sing that song the same way again-- or hear it sung the same way, by ourselves or by another choir in another lifetime.

The name Conspirare was chosen for our group because it means "to breathe together." It is the most basic premise of any choral ensemble. In a larger sense, it is a fine premise for any community of people, when you stop to think about it. (Surely it is no mistake that the verb "conspire" is related?)

Today, Conspirare did more than fulfill our mission of breathing together. We, with the help of Messrs. Neruda  and Lauridsen (and Johnson and Farwig), were able to be together, in a way that was both deeply personal and deeply communal.

Thank you, Gentlemen.