Hallelujah!

Driving home from Craig's parent's house on Sunday, they started playing Handel's Messiah on the radio. Can I just say that I love, love, LOVE Messiah. It is some of my favorite music. And the recording they happened to be playing was a really good one, from the little bit that I heard. I was a little surprised at first that they were playing it at this time of the year, but then I remembered that in England, this is considered Easter music, and it's only in America that we sing it at Christmas time, so then it all made a little more sense. (Maybe the D.J. is British?)

Anyway, listening to it and feeling slightly drowsy from eating too much at my in-law's, I began reminiscing about the experience I've had with this amazing music. So I may as well share it with you, right?

I only knew a few of the songs-- the Hallelujah Chorus, "For Unto Us a Son is Born," just the obvious stuff, really-- until my mission. My first Christmas in the mission field, the ONLY Christmas music we had was the Mormon Tabernacle Choir performing Messiah, so as you can imagine, we listened to it a LOT. And it was fun. Sister Howard and I spent many a night riding around on our bikes singing "All We Like Sheep" to our heart's content. We got some weird looks, but we were already foreigners (gaijin!) riding around on bikes in dresses in the snow and wearing helmets to boot, so we were pretty much going to be freaks no matter what we did. May as well have fun doing it, right?

My favorite songs, along with the two I just mentioned, are "And He Shall Purify," which just builds and builds and becomes more and more beautiful and intense as it goes along, and the Overture. I love how the very first bars are very slow and sad and even a bit melodramatic, until suddenly this one violin starts playing this cheerful little tune and the whole orchestra takes it up until it becomes more and more joyous. I could listen to that one little violin for hours, it just makes me so happy. I would want to learn to play the violin just for that one song, I think.

Anyway, since my mission, I've had some wonderful opportunities to continue my love affair with this music. My first Christmas home, my good friend from high school, Elizabeth, told me that her family had an extra ticket to a performance of it at Benaroya Hall and would I like to go. Would I??? Can you get much luckier than that? And then Craig and I got tickets to the National Cathedral performance last year, which was amazing. But I think my absolute favorite performance was the free sing-along that they hold at the Kennedy Center, which Craig and I were able to attend this last year.

To get these free tickets, all you have to do is stand in line for a really long time. (You used to have to camp out, but they changed that this year-- what luck! Camping on December 22nd in D.C. sounds like a very cold version of hell to me... And the wait now is inside, so it's not too bad at all!) So we enlisted my ever-helpful in-law's aid, and were able to score some seats in the fifth row! (And, extra-bonus, our friends the Fords were able to join us, so that made it even better!)

And now that I've done the sing-along, I have say that the whole thing was just incredible. It probably would have even been worth camping out for. And I hope to be able to do it many more years to come!

The main conductor (they had three throughout the course of the performance) not only conducted the orchestra and the audience, but also added his own advice and his own reading of the songs in order to help you get the right feeling for some of the pieces. So, for example, he began by asking us to turn to our neighbors, smile at them, and then remember that we would never see these people again. So if we messed up, who cared? "Sing your heart out! This is the most joyous message of all time!" he advised us. And I took it to heart! I don't think you can really fully appreciate the joy of the Hallelujah Chorus until you've actually sung it all the way through yourself. It truly is amazing. I can't remember the last time Craig and I had such huge smiles on our faces!

And speaking of joyful messages, in one of my classes at BYU, we talked about Messiah, and my professor explained that it was first performed in Dublin, and then as it became a hit in England, the proceeds from the show would go towards helping people get out of debtor's prison in Ireland. My professor commented that he thought it was highly symbolic that music about our Savior helped people pay the debts that they themselves couldn't pay.

Layer upon layer of why I love this music. I couldn't have asked for a better treat Easter night.