I’m attaching an item I so enjoyed I simply have to share it. It is “Ode to Joy”, Beethoven’s magnificent chorus in the 9th Symphony, based on a Schiller poem, familiar to churchgoers as the great hymn, ”Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee”. It moved me deeply, as music often does. But this presentation felt like a brave act of resistance to the “social distancing” we are all necessarily experiencing. A group of Dutch musicians, members of the Rotterdam Symphony Orchestra, separated from one another by the Coronavirus, playing from their individual, personal apartments, nevertheless reach out and connect through music and the result is both gorgeous and powerful. A daughter sent it to me, and I have watched and listened several times. I hope you will take time to do the same.

It set me to thinking about music. Reading David Brooks’ The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life, I came across some provocative and insightful observations in a chapter on Vocation and what Brooks calls “The Annunciation Moment.” Brooks writes: “To feel wonderful in the face of beauty is to be grandly astonished. A person entranced by wonder is pulled out of the normal voice-in-your-head self-absorption and finds herself awed by something greater than herself.” (p.96)

I remember it clearly. When I was in the 4th grade my parents bought a used trumpet and arranged for me take lessons. They also enforced a rigid rule: no outside playing until I had practiced the trumpet for 30 minutes. Mother set the oven timer to assure that I practiced the full half hour. I thought it was torture, like being an inmate in a concentration camp, but I did it, mostly. Now – a beginner at any instrument does not produce anything remotely resembling beauty. Young, beginning violin, clarinet, trombone or trumpet players produce squawks and screeches as they labor with scales and exercises. The “Annunciation Moment” came when I was first a part of a real ensemble: for me it was Junior High School Band and the music was a John Phillip Sousa March. I was stunned at the music produced. Suddenly, my small, pathetic voice was part of something that made sense, and to my adolescent ear, sounded pretty good.

Music was a gift, given over and over many times. It has become one of my avocations. I never became as proficient at the trumpet as I wanted: sports, academics and other school activities kept interfering. But I was proficient enough to participate in music making through high school and college in bands, orchestras and small ensembles, and in the process was given many of my most memorable experiences: our high school band was invited to the National School Boy Patrol parade in Washington and I remember the thrill of turning onto Pennsylvania Avenue, playing American Patrol March – and winning first prize. Our high school orchestra did a credible job with Mozart’s 40th Symphony, (It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Mozart!), and a Mendelssohn Piano Concerto. My musical horizons were slowly but greatly expanded when I was invited to be the third chair trumpet player in the newly formed Community Symphony Orchestra. The hard truth is that the third chair trumpet player in a symphony orchestra doesn’t have much to do but count measures and listen to great music. Another “Annunciation Moment” came when, sitting beside the French horn section I was enveloped in strong, virile horn playing in the 4th movement of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. I remember still the hair raising on my neck.

Similarly, the great hymns of the church have often lifted me out of myself and placed me in the long history of God’s praise.

So, in the midst of the Coronavirus distancing and isolation, the music of the Rotterdam musicians, playing apart from one another but, nevertheless producing beauty, was a reminder that community is basic to who we are as human beings and is strong in spite of separation, and that the gift of music can help us through this challenge.

It is also a promise that we will endure and live to stand together again to sing….

Joyful, joyful we adore Thee,

God of glory, Lord of love.

Hearts unfold like flowers before Thee,

Opening to the sun above.