Maybe it has been the long year of COVID; maybe it was the snowstorm that “took out“ the Fourth Sunday of Lent, or maybe there’s just a lot on my mind these days, but it feels like Ash Wednesday was just yesterday and I can’t believe we are already in the midst of Holy Week! Today I’m finishing this series on the Passion with the last movement, which was woven together as a kind of musical retrospective of the earlier movements, with little bits and pieces of motifs and melodies from the entire composition.
I did this to reflect the text, because I believe it is a large part of what we do at the end of someone’s life. Especially in the moments just after the death, we flip back through our memories and pull up snippets of the journey we’ve shared. The recent memories are clearest and then slowly the earlier, sometimes deeper, recollections emerge.
I think it is fitting as I look back at the times we’ve celebrated the Passion to share a few such images that have stuck with me over the years. When I first brought the score to Teresa Stone I really did expect her to tell me I was crazy and that no choir in their right mind would try to sing this. But she jumped right on board and got the choir excited as well. It was only years later when we knew each other better and trusted the piece would come together each year, that we were laughing one day and she finally told me that when I first gave it to her she thought that I was crazy and that no choir in their right mind would try to sing this. (She probably said it much more pastorally…)
I have such a vivid memory of her the first year we were getting ready to sing the Passion, on a flight to Anaheim as the staff and I were headed to a religious conference. She was sitting for most of the two and a half hour flight with the score in her lap, listening to synthesized recordings, and conducting the odd patterns of various time signatures. There was (and is) a dedication and talent there that has drawn other amazing musicians to her and to our program. Together with so many musicians, she has created a parish music program that is both unique and unrivaled in our Church throughout the region.