A Walker in the Suburbs

Think of it as a large shower with superb acoustics — the kind that frees you up to belt out a tune — or as a way to release holiday stress in song. Every year the Reston Singers offers members of the community the chance to sing along to Handel’s Messiah. And every year, a few hundred people take them up on it.

Last night’s concert featured exquisite soloists, robust alto and soprano sections, and enough tenors and basses to make do. Together, we made our way through “Glory to God,” “For He Shall Purify,” “For Unto Us a Child is Born” and other choruses.

The big kahuna came at the end, and that was, of course, the “Hallelujah Chorus.” By then we were in fine fettle. We’d warmed up our pipes and could release our inner divas. “King of kings. Forever and ever! And Lord of Lords. Hallelujah, Hallelujah!”

When I stood to leave there was a lone tenor behind me. He admitted that he had gotten goosebumps from the experience. I admitted that I had, too. The Singalong Messiah was a high-octane dose of seasonal cheer.

(From a 2023 professional “Messiah” performance. I took no photos last night.)

I heard the bells as soon as we stepped out of the car. They confirmed that we had not, in fact, parked too far away, that the National Cathedral was close enough to walk to and be in our seats by 2 p.m. It had been an interesting trip in from the ‘burbs. One wrong turn meant we entered the city not the way I had planned, across the low-key Chain Bridge, but through the city, weaving through Rock Creek Park, trying to decode strange GPS directives.

But miraculously we arrived with 30 minutes to spare, and we spent 15 of them walking through the chill toward the cathedral, pulled by the bells and carillon, by the holiday tunes it played, by the ancient call to worship and to sing.

Once inside I reveled in the warmth and the bustle. It was a near-capacity audience in the massive church. A brass ensemble played as we took our seats, then a hush came over the crowd as the lights dimmed and the candlelight procession began. “Oh come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant!” Thousands of voices lifted together in song.

Right before the concert began a young couple sat down in front of us with their baby, an adorable little boy with chubby cheeks and curly hair. I’ll admit I was apprehensive. Would he fuss? Would he distract me with his cuteness?

Neither happened. Instead, he looked up at the vaulted ceiling, at the rose window, and pointed his little index finger up to heaven. He did it over and over again, reminding us all to look, to wonder, to be amazed. My eyes filled at his gesture, at the music, at the fact that I was here in this sacred space, welcoming the season with joy and song.

Paul McCartney woke up one day in 1963 with a melody in his head. For a long time he thought it wasn’t his. He had grown up with dancehall tunes, and he figured it must be one of those. He played it for John Lennon, who didn’t recognize it. At a party, he played it for Alma Cogan, a 1950s British pop star. She didn’t recognize it either.

Meanwhile, Cogan’s mother entered the room, asking who might like some scrambled eggs, writes Ian Leslie in his fine book John and Paul: A Love Story in Songs. McCartney realized that the syllables were right and created the first lyrics to what would become arguably his most famous song: “Scrambled eggs/Oh my baby how I love your legs.”

For a song conceived almost in a dream, it took a year and a half for McCartney to figure out something more than these nonsense lyrics. That happened when he was half asleep in a cab on his way to a borrowed villa in Portugal and came up with the idea of starting each verse with three-syllable words: yesterday, suddenly. He finished writing “Yesterday” during his 1965 holiday in Portugal.

Ever since I read this story weeks ago in Leslie’s book, I’ve had “Scrambled Eggs” in my head, too. More than an ear worm, it’s a telling example of creativity’s weirdness. We don’t know when inspiration will strike, the forms it will take, or how long it will tug at our sleeves before we can decode it. For some reason, I find this enormously comforting.

I’m a longtime supporter of public radio. Whether I’m tuned to the Sunday jazz show or the classical station during the week, there’s radio music blaring here most of the time. The parakeets love it, and I do, too.

Of course, there are those inevitable periods throughout the year when a fund drive takes place. In the past, I’d turn it off. I’m a member, so why listen to hours of cajoling, of hearing how for less than the price of a cup of coffee a day you can support your favorite station.

This year, though, things are different. This year, I’m listening to as much of the fund drive as I can. I don’t mind the pleading, the shilling of a compilation CD, or the announcement of a new tee shirt lego. This year it’s “Defunded but not Bach’ing Down.”

All the talk makes me feel part of a community, a community of the air, to be sure, but a community just the same.

With the abolishment of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the removal of already earmarked federal funds, I feel more protective of public radio, and more grateful for it. I’ll listen to as much of the fund drive as I can stand, though I won’t be listening much longer. It ends in less than an hour. Will the station make its goal? I hope so. It matters more than ever that they do.

(Photo: Courtesy WETA Classical, which did, by the way, meet its goal.)

Last week, unable to stop listening to Schubert’s Sonata in B-flat Major, I took the next logical step. I found the music online and am now trying to learn this amazing piece.

As typical in an endeavor of this sort, I come up against my impatient personality and some basic questions: How many mistakes can I tolerate? How correct must I be? I have no teacher to suggest fingerings and dynamics. I’ll rely on YouTube and my own rusty technique.

The music has been in my head since the concert in Providence. Now I must get it into my fingers. I’m starting small, a page or two at a time. If I can even semi-master the first movement up to the repeat by the end of the summer, I’ll declare victory.

The composer Franz Schubert wrote his Moments Musicaux between 1823 and 1827. These short pieces are some of the composer’s most popular. He wrote them to give his public what they wanted, a chance to play music at home. He gave them much more; he gave them a masterpiece.

Yesterday, I heard pianist Jonathan Biss play Schubert’s three last sonatas. He performed them flawlessly, viscerally, emotionally. The last piece on the program was the Sonata in B-flat Major, Opus 960, which begins so melodically, with such depth and richness, that another world seemed to open with those notes and harmonic shifts.

We sat around the piano, about 200 of us, and at intermission the piano was flipped so that those who saw Biss’s hands in the first half of the program saw his face in the second half. I’m not sure which was more moving. Biss’s hands never stopped, even in “rest,” but his face was transporting.

I was lucky to watch it during the final piece, the Opus 960 Sonata. Biss then became a conduit for Schubert, lying on his deathbed, sending his last notes to the world. It’s been a long time since I’ve been so moved by hearing a piece of live music. It was my “moment musicaux.”

In honor of Brahms 192nd birthday today I just listened to a podcast about the composer. I learned that he was shy, self-conscious, and hard on himself. No wonder I love the guy.

Brahms was such a perfectionist that he spent much time, especially later in his life, hunting down and destroying the music he’d written earlier. Pieces he considered sub-par did not make the cut. Who knows how much more of his music we’d have if he hadn’t been so self-critical.

It took Brahms 20 years to write his first symphony. He kept a bust of Beethoven on his desk, just to ratchet up the pressure. The result? Some of the most sublime music this side of heaven. Turn up the volume when you listen to this piece, the finale of Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture.

(A clean-shaven Brahms. He didn’t grow a beard until his mid-40s.)

It was only a few measures snatched from the radio but I’ve been humming them since Wednesday: the opening phrases of Bach’s English Suite Number 5. Who knows why a melody lodges itself in your mind, but this one made itself at home in mine.

Usually I’ll forget a piece in a few days — or, if it’s persistent and for the piano, find the music and play it. This time, miraculously enough, I already owned it. I pulled it out yesterday and started practicing.

To learn a piece from scratch is to probe the heart of it, to marvel at the intricacies of meter and harmony, the contrapuntal wonder of it all. I did that yesterday with Bach … only remembering this morning that March 21st is his birthday.

I can’t think of a more fitting reminder of his genius than to try and play one of his piano works, taking it apart and putting it back together again.

Happy Birthday, Johann Sebastian Bach! Your suite is humbling me.

His birthday was yesterday, but my mind was elsewhere when I wrote Monday’s post — mostly in the clouds, I guess.

But Mozart was in the air all day, courtesy of my local classical station. I heard symphonies and sonatas and divertimentos. I caught the entire 21st Piano Concerto and for fun pulled out my music and followed along. There in pencil were my teacher’s notes: “Play softer!” “No pedal!” I still can’t believe that I was able to memorize and play the first movement of this piece with my high school orchestra. But apparently I did, and I have the music to prove it!

Mozart was with me then and in the months and years leading up to that concert. And he was with me yesterday, wafting through the airwaves, pulsing through my earbuds during a late-day walk. My day may not have been totally Mozart, but it mostly was.

(Photo: Musikverein in Vienna. Title: With apologies to Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart festival, recently renamed.)

The Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols I know is the one that takes place in King’s College Cambridge on Christmas Eve. It’s the one that begins with these words “Once in Royal David’s City,” often sung in the dulcet tones of a boy soprano.

It’s also the one that the famous Groton School of Groton, Massachusetts, holds or used to hold, which we once foolishly attended with newborn Suzanne. She didn’t cry … much. But I spent most of the service worrying that she would, especially during the agonizingly long minutes when the solemn procession blocked our exit.

The Festival of Lessons and Carols last night was a different matter. It was beautiful and earnest, not a flame in the darkness but a well-lit performance featuring the choir and its new director, an organist extraordinaire. The reading and songs weren’t the exact ones I was expecting but they checked all the boxes.

Afterward we went up and talked with the director, congratulated him on the success of the event and asked some questions about the organ. Turns out, it’s a hybrid instrument, part digital, part real pipes. I had no idea such a combination exists and am doubly amazed now at the sound that comes out of it.

To hear “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” on that instrument is to hear the carol in all its ancient and aching wonderment. A suiting accompaniment to the words of Isaiah: “Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain.”