The Unanswered Question

My introduction to choral music was at the  church of my childhood and youth, the Hillcrest Baptist Church in Enterprise, Alabama.  Accompanied by  the piano and organ, the choirs and the congregational singing had a powerful effect on me. This music shaped all of the music I would ever sing or direct.

My introduction to outstanding choral music happened in August of 1973. After graduating from the Enterprise State Junior College in Enterprise, Alabama, I continued my music education at Samford University in Birmingham.

I was mildly amused over my three years of touring with that choir at how many well-meaning people said something like, "I'm amazed at how well the choir sings without any music."  I always just smiled and agreed with them and understood what they were saying "without any accompaniment". The afternoon of our first day of choir camp at Shocco Springs Baptist Assembly in Talladega, Alabama, the choir gathered for the first rehearsal. I was one of 64 voices in this choir. I'm sure you are familiar with four-part singing-soprano, alto, tenor and bass.  You may not be as familiar with a choir of eight voice parts- first and second of each of those parts.  This choral unit consisted of eight singers singing each of those eight parts. That year I was a first bass, a baritone. My last two years, I was a second bass, the low part.(sometimes referred to as "Russian basses". I was more of an American; those "Russians" I stood beside rattled my teeth and bones and helped me sing lower than I was normally capable of).  But that afternoon I was more an observer than a participant. I really had no way of knowing what was about to happen.  Dr. Black handed out a piece, O Day Full of Grace by F. Melius Christiansen. The veterans were very familiar with  this music. Someone sounded the pitch pipe, the first and second basses hummed their unison note. He slightly dropped his hand when the magic happened.. The piece begins with the basses on "O day" on an ascending perfect 4th.  It sounded like a squadron of B52s idling on the runway.  And then the altos joined the chorus and the sopranos and tenors joined in.

I have no words to explain what happened next. I was immediately surrounded by musical sounds that I didn't  know existed.  Three years later Dr. Paul Hall in a class on children's choirs said, "You can't have a concept of something until you experience it". Until that moment I had had no "concept" of choral music. I had certainly never heard anything like that. Do you ever have something happen and you're not absolutely sure that you are the one it's happening to?  Such was the case as the rehearsal of that song continued. All the boundaries between myself and each person on the stage vanished.  I was absorbed into the music and into them.  The group was no longer male and female, freshmen and seniors, Alabamians and Floridians,  gay or straight. They were all just sopranos, altos, tenors and basses. I was caught up "into the seventh heaven". For three years the choir rehearsed five days a week, one hour on three days and 90 minutes on the other two. No matter what else was going on in my somewhat chaotic existence, that ensemble was home. We toured once a year for two weeks and sang at various places at other times.  We were even the featured choir at the National Cathedral and the National Prayer Breakfast for President Gerald Ford. My out-of-the-body experience I had on that stage in Talladega continued as  I sang in cathedrals all over Europe. Singing those double motets in those split-chancel  centuries old cathedrals in Sweden was one of the most sublime and surreal experiences of my life.  Any minute I expected to be translated like Enoch who "walked with God and was no more".  "Where did David go?", the choir members asked. "I don't know. He was here a second ago."

I enjoy listening to many different types of music from heavy metal to symphonic masterpieces. But the music I listen  to most often, especially when I want to be moved and filled, is a cappella choral music. I draw from the well of F. Melius Christiansen, Paul Christiansen,  Ola Gjielo, Eric Whitacre, Morten Lauridsen, Samuel Barber, Stephen Paulus, and Charles Ives. I listen to the unison of Gregorian Chant. I listen to the masters of the Renaissance such as Josquin Des Prez, Giovanni Palestrina and  others. I'm listening now to a piece by Palestrina we sang in the A Cappella Choir. And as I listen in the absolute privacy created by my Bose noise-cancelling headphones, my awareness not only expands, but I am transported back to Talledega, Alabama where it all began. when for the first time in my life I learned the meaning of "a cappella". Were we singing without music?  Not on your life. This music became Jacob's ladder; I ascend to the heavens time and time again.

Two of my favorite pieces we sang in the Samford A Cappella Choir were Prayers of Steel and Psalm 67 by Charles Ives(1874-1954). They both were rather dissonant.  Ives, now one of the most famous of American composers,  was the organist at the small church of his adolescence. The organ and the piano were slightly out of tune with each other.  Later he would compose music to sound a lot like that. He composed Psalm 67 in two simultaneous keys. The men sang in G major while the women in C minor throughout the composition. The consonance in dissonance became a metaphor for my troubled existence. It is still a metaphor for my existence. If I didn't find beauty and  meaning in the clashing discordance of living,  I would find no beauty and meaning at all.

When I visited Samford's campus for the first time in the spring of 1973, I met Dr. Black the conductor of the A Cappella Choir in the music office.  He asked, "Do you sing?"  I replied, "Yes, I sing."  He took me then and there to his office and had me sing some scales and a hymn, My Jesus I Love Thee. A few weeks later I got a letter in the mail that I had been accepted in the A Cappella Choir. This was even before I received another letter in a few days that said I had been accepted as a student at Samford University. I'm quite sure Dr. Black had something to do with that. Four months later I was sitting with 63 other students on the stage of the chapel at Shocco Springs Baptist  Assembly. Isn't it  amazing how radically our lives are changed before we even know it. As I listen now to Exsultate Deo, a piece we sang  written by Palestrina in the 16th century, my heart is still warmed and changed. The music that was in this man's  head and heart in Italy over 500 years ago, warms my heart this morning in Ringgold, Georgia. Selah.

My favorite piece by Charles Ives is not a choral work, it's instrumental. The solo trumpet asks the question and the consonant drone of the orchestra attempts to answer it. The Unanswered Question is one of the most beautiful and haunting works of art I have ever heard. And so it goes, the answers are not nearly as important as the questions. "Live the questions", Frederick Buechner advised. But I leave you with a question and an answer. "Why did the chicken cross the road?"  "Because he, like I when I listen to music, had absolutely nothing better to do."