A Winter Song

I fully intended to blow right through this holiday season and not say anything about the season, the traditions, or the clichés that so easily come to mind this time of year. This is entirely in keeping with my heritage. Since my mother and father were both born and raised in the western US state of Montana – Big Sky Country – that makes me a Cowboy. Cowboys are not ones for showing lots of emotion, we keep our feelings to ourselves. We work hard; we’re self sufficient; and we don’t go in much for fancy words and high falutin’ ideas.

In addition to my Mom and Dad being from Montana, my grandmother on my Dad’s side came to this country when she was 18 years old from Balsfjord, Norway. She and my grandfather, a second generation Swede, were homesteaders in Big Sandy, Montana. That means I’m also born into the tradition of the Norsky Farmers. Norsky Farmers are, if that is possible, even more reserved than Cowboys. Did you hear about the Norsky Farmer that loved his wife so much he almost told her?

So now you see where I’m coming from with my decision to just not acknowledge the holiday season and all that. Well, then my wife drags me out of the house Sunday afternoon and we get in a cab and go downtown to see a performance of singers, actors and musicians titled “A Winter’s Song”. She explains to me that we are going to a madrigal dinner; sure I say; what’s a madrigal?

The performance is in the Chicago Cultural Center and as we enter the building I look around and remember what a grand public space it is. It was built about 120 years ago in the Romanesque style. That means wide marble staircases, rich mosaics of colorful tiles and semi-precious stones inlaid into marble walls, and reception halls with dark polished woodwork, high domed ceilings and soaring arched windows stretching almost from floor to ceiling that look out over the city. This is what I call architecture.

We enter the hall where the performance will take place. Long banquet tables are set and soon after we take our seats the performance begins. Brass trumpets announce the entry of 15 singers dressed in period costumes from England around the time of Henry the 8^th. The women are wearing flowing dresses of red and green velvet trimmed with pearls and gold thread embroidery; the men wear tunics and red and blue velvet jackets trimmed with fur and more gold embroidery.

They begin singing and I hear what a madrigal is. They sing unaccompanied by instruments; the songs are light with pleasing harmonies between the men and the women and simple but interesting rhythms. My wife tells me these songs come from Europe in the Middle Ages to the Renaissance; they are sung in French, Italian, Spanish, German and English; I find myself smiling and listening intently.

As the event progresses, we are served the different courses of our dinner and we visit with the people sitting near us at the table. We are all enjoying ourselves; the madrigals are splendid; and clever comic relief is provided in the performance by the antics of a court jester and a serving wench. The singers and actors and musicians are all from the College of Fine Arts at Illinois State University.

Time flew by. Then the singers were singing the last few madrigals, and we came to the last song. They told us to sing this last one along with them; they assured us we would know it. They began singing a song written in the madrigal tradition; it was written in 1818 in Germany; we all knew it. The song is "Stille Nacht" in German and "Silent Night" in English. The singers’ voices were clear, and light, and harmonized with each other beautifully; we in the audience were drawn into that harmony; we all participated; I sang when I knew the words and hummed when I only knew the tune. We went through all six stanzas.

By the second stanza I could feel the singers radiating an emotion that came through their voices. By the third stanza I felt my own voice start to choke up; my vocal chords got tight like just before you cry…but Cowboys don’t show emotion and they sure as heck don’t cry. I looked out the corner of my eyes at people around me; there were other folks starting to get a bit choked up; I wasn’t alone. By the fourth stanza I saw a tear roll down the face of one of the women singers yet she smiled and her voice was clear and light. I was blinking to keep the tears out of my eyes and humming because I didn’t know the words, but I couldn’t have sung them even if I did know them because of the lump in my throat.

On the way home my wife said she didn’t see a dry eye in the place. We think technology is powerful; yet it pales in comparison to the art those performers brought forth. Through this art two hundred people of diverse backgrounds in a splendid public space in the center of one of the world’s great cities united in a song that was a yearning for peace and an invocation of what Abraham Lincoln called the “better angels of our nature”.

Let us find ways to use technology to support the message of this art.