Next weekend (May 10-11), I’ll be singing (alto! the best part!) Missa Solemnis with the Choral Society at Grace Church, one of the most exceptional and highest-quality choirs in the city. (There are still tickets left for our Friday evening and Saturday matinee performances. Please come! I’d love to share it with you!) In preparation for our performance of Beethoven’s complicated, difficult material, our soulful and excellent conductor, John Maclay, shared with us the following, by Maynard Solomon on the importance of art:
“If we lose our awareness of the transcendent realms of play, beauty, and kinship that are portrayed in the great affirmative works of our culture, if we lose the reconciling dream of the Ninth Symphony, there may remain no counterpoise against the engulfing terrors of civilization, nothing to set against Auschwitz and Vietnam as a paradigm of humanity’s possibilities.”
