We went to Handel's Messiah at the Albert Hall last Sunday, John and I, at his request. The last time we went was with Mom and Dad and it was St James' Church Piccadilly and the seats were quite hard. John said he preferred to listen to the Messiah in a religious setting and I agreed. Unfortunately, I had a fierce cough and for at least some of the performance I was concentrating on trying not to cough. I failed.
There was the shoe issue again. You must give me warning Dad, said John and so he had to wear my over sized shoes again with the soles glued on. It was cold and we stayed at home as long as we could before jumping out of the house and heading for town. We had a good view of the stage, the little orchestra. There were 500 hundred singers ranked vertically up the side of the concert hall, behind the stage.
It was either this or the Red Army Choir, I whispered to John. Both equally inspiring and then I remembered of course, that there is no such thing as a Red Army or a Red Army Choir any more and that was sad. We both anticipated something special.
We were in the Royal Albert Hall listening to the Royal Philharmonic and the choir was a combination of the English Concert Chorus, Goldsmiths Choral Union and the Highgate Choral Society. There was only one black man in the whole choir. Most of the choir seemed to be white men and women in their late sixties.
The acoustics were fine, but the individual voices of the soloists, had lost something of their power by the time they reached the circle. The voice of Christopher Gillit, the tenor who sang was particularly weedy, beautifully controlled but lacking in emotion. I liked the bass, Brindley Sheratt and Christine Rice both sang beautifully and was beautiful. She reminded me of an old girlfriend of mine, Nicole.
As we sat I suddenly remembered. When I was 19 my father invited me to the Albert Hall to hear Vilayet Kahn and Ustad Alla Rakha and we had sat in almost the exact same seats. He was a little younger than I am now, but I was the same age as my son is. I remember the concert was very long and we both got quite fidgety. The Hall wasn't full either. Later on my father asked me to write a review of the concert for his Magazine and the review of a book about India. I did so, but he didn't publish it because the India correspondent objected.
I have a problem with high culture in Britain because it serves as a class marker. There were people there listening to Handel who were there just because it was a way of marking out their class. They probably wouldn't even enjoy the music.
But then there were other people there who were in their eighties and who were ill and who this was so meaningful for them. To hear Handel at Christmas in the Albert Hall. Perhaps the last concert they would see. And though high culture has keep off signs on it placed there by the British ruling class, the public school boys and girls who regard it as their tribal marker, much of what goes for British high culture is still wonderful and we should be grateful that traditions like going to Handel's Messiah at Christmas a so well preserved.
As a Republican I should not have got up during the Hallelujah chorus like the rest of them, but I did anyway. What the heck.
There was something upsetting about the experience. Something unsatisfying and unsatisfied. 500 singers got to their feet with a rustle and sat down with a rustle. Across from us in the circle I could see thousands of motionless heads in the dark. It's as if they were motionless waiting for rain. Spiritual rain which did not come.
Can you get 500 people together, the Royal Philharmonic and sing Handel's Messiah in the Albert hall to thousands of spiritually thirsty people and leave their thirsts cruelly unslaked.
This is what they did. The whole thing left me unsatisfied.
There is a profound lack of generosity in artists these days. A profound lack of ability to go the extra mile and trancend. The only time the choir came to life was when the trumpeteers came in, because they all knew the audience would appreciate the 'famous' chorus.
If music and spirituallity flows then all has meaning and when it does not then even the most divine music will not live. There is a mean spiritedness abroad and I witnessed it on the 12th of December. They gave just enough to pass muster and no more. They gave nothing to the greater glory of God or in faith to the circling wheel of fortune and all those artists who are ungenerous with their art and mercenary may they suffer the spiritual thirsts the engender but do not satisfy.
To hoard your skill and your art, won through study and practice is to betray its essence. A circle is built for those artists in an Albert Hall in hell.
Still, the motor of the choir and the orchestra was kicked into a roar and soulless and selfish and class ridden as it was it still echoes and the young man next to me enjoyed it. He was appreciative, a singer perhaps. Pointed, laughed softly to his friend, leaned forwards, tapped his fingers.
A week later and bits of Messiah flare up a while I am brushing my teeth or cooking or walking with my daughter in the snow.
I took John to yet another awful Italian family run restaurant and we hugged and he went back to Camden and I went back home.
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