Hallelujah!

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

Robert Frost

I learned the Hallelujah Chorus in the back seat of a two-toned blue and white ’56 or ’57 Chevy sedan on one of our many trips driving over Donner Pass in a blizzard as we headed either to or from Sacramento to Las Vegas to spend Christmas at Grandma’s house during the years my dad was stationed at Mather Air Force Base. Unable to afford a station wagon, my dad had constructed a padded bench which exactly filled the gap between the front and back seats so we kids could spread out blankets and pillows and nap in comfort. With radio reception scratchy or sometimes non-existent, we often sang our way through the miles.

Dad’s favorite was cowboy music by the Sons of the Pioneers, which is why my brother and I knew all the verses to pretty much every song they ever recorded. The appearance of snow often inspired my dad to burst into song with the Hallelujah Chorus. Both my parents were from tiny Nevada towns you have to search to find on a map, but my dad spent two years at BYU before WWII broke out. Joining what must have been an enormous musical group to a small-town farm boy, he sang with the Men’s Choir during that time before he enlisted. On long trips, he taught us every song in his college repertoire. Of course, he only knew the bass parts, so it was not until I was in high school that I learned I’d only been singing the bottom 1/4  of Handel’s immortal music—just an octave higher.

When it was my turn to head to BYU, I black-mailed my way into an audition-required chorale. I lacked any serious musical talent, but I wrote the publicity for the Music Department, so it was a wise political move to allow me a spot. It was traditional then for the Fine Arts performance groups to hold a pre-Christmas break Brown Bag concert at the Harris Fine Arts Center. With the symphony on the ground floor and several choirs of voices, bells, brass, and string ensembles lining the two stories of balconies which overlooked the main hall, each group took turns celebrating in music the Birth of the Baby in Bethlehem. For the finale, we joined together to perform the Hallelujah Chorus.

I recall standing at the railing high above the orchestra with the other members of the Women’s Choir. As the introduction began, a frail and elderly gray-haired woman slipped through the crowd and stood next to me, lifting her hand with mine to share music of the most famous anthem in Handel’s 240-paged Messiah score. All around the half dozen formal choirs, members of the audience were moving forward to join their voices with ours. When the conductor signaled us to begin, I was stunned by the power of the voice coming from the tiny woman beside me. I do not believe she ever glanced even once at the music we held together. As our voices rose, her face began to glow, wrinkles seeming to reassemble themselves into an image which–as a young person–I had never seen before: her face was etched with joy.

The music rang across the broad expanse of hall to rafters and then back again. When it ended with its final triumphal note, the air seemed to collapse from my new partner’s small frame. She smiled up at me, and then she disappeared into the clamor of several hundred students bustling to their next class or headed home for Christmas vacation. There was not time for me to even learn her name.

Over the years, I have had occasion to listen to many performances of the Hallelujah Chorus, including some in which my own children and hundreds–perhaps thousands–of high school students have participated. Without fail, like the unknown woman who sang next to me in my college days, we are each transported to an ancient field where shepherds watched their flocks and wondered at the brilliant star which lit the deep, dark night of long ago. Around us the heavens open, revealing “a multitude of heavenly host praising God, and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.’”

Hallelujah. Amen. And Amen.