Choir Raises Hell, Bach.

This week I attended a choir performance. It was really very good. Several people died.

The Aden sisters participate in… (choirings? Chorings? There really should be a suitable word for beating audiences over the head with large amounts of music.) …Choir performances quite regularly. Normally they are very beautiful and very enjoyable, so Aerin and I attend often. The one that we attended this week, though, was under a different director. While he seems innocent enough, I have difficulty believing that a man could do something so diabolical as he has done so totally by accident.

The man had the choir perform complete Days of J.S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. Days. And he had them perform it well. If that doesn’t send cold shivers up your spine, it ought to.

If you don’t recognize the name, you might know it as Bach’s ‘Cacophony in D Major’. I know what you’re thinking, and yes, it’s been performed before. Bach specified in his will that it was never to be performed, but apparently the last request of a grandmaster bardic mage is more of a challenge than a deterrent. Bach’s request has, up until now, been somewhat respected, by being done off key or with certain small parts omitted so that it is not quite as he wrote it. Thus, the Cacophony causes nothing worse than flickering lights or a severe unease in the audience. Apparently, this director thought that performing it in the English language was enough of a modification. But the effect upon the soul of the world is in the music. Infinitely more so than in the words.

I was really very excited to hear the Christmas Oratorio performed, and there was a certain very powerful note in the First Day that was botched, I thought deliberately, so I assumed that everything was being done as it should. As the performance continued into the Second Day, the lights continued to flicker and even began to flash strange colors. I even briefly experienced the intense desire to be somewhere else. It was amazing. I commented to Aerin that the director was being very theatrical, leaving the flaw in the piece until the very end to maximize the paranormal show. But then the second piece did end, performed in it’s entirety. As written. I was dumbfounded.

One of the choir girls died instantaneously, poor thing. She was right in front, just suddenly lifeless, as though the Second Day had used her up in a moment. Surely Bach would have put a girl with greater fortitude in the lead soprano position, but this unsuspecting girl could not handle the strain at all. The Orchestra kept playing. The Choir kept singing. I think they were locked into the music at that point, incapable of  stopping. From the looks on their faces, they must have been in pain.

The refractions of stained glass windows shown clearly upon the walls, though it was night and the church was a modern one with no such glass. They spun about with an effect like that of a disco room, if a singularly baroque one.  I realize now that the glass was a reflection from St. Thomas, Leipzig, but I didn’t realize the significance then.

St Thomas is where the Second Day was first performed, and – luckily for us, I believe – was where Bach was interred. I have no idea what would have happened if it has been the First Day that had been sung without flaw, or another of the three Days that had been performed first at St. Nicholas. Perhaps the same thing. Perhaps we would all be dead.

As it was, the church’s own lights failed entirely, and I suspect we had been transported bodily to a plane of Death or Purgatory. Bach was not a dabbler. Not in the slightest. It is impressive, I think, that he built into the music the constraint that kept the choir singling and the orchestra playing. Surely something horrible would have happened if they had stopped then.

After a few bars, the stained glass refractions stopped spinning, and settled themselves into place about the choir and audience, dividing us from the place we were in. The choir and orchestra also shown with a similar intense light, though it seemed to flow from them in motes. Their very life, poured out in music, powering the round of “We sing to you in your army” that drove the spell.

A horn failed, It’s player drained of life. A minute later, another choir girl fell, this time from the back of the stage. It appeared she broke her neck, but I don’t believe it mattered to her at that point. I was vaguely worried for Sa and Qu, who I may remind you were in the choir, but that was the third effect of the music : rather than the first intense desire to be elsewhere, Day’s final round inspired a deep contentment; a feeling that everything was exactly as it should be. I could not act. I could barely whisper commentary to Aerin, just watching as the scene unfolded. Watching stoically as one of the violins caught fire, and the player kept playing it while it – and he – burned.

A specter materialized then, forming out of some stray motes of music. An old man, stern looking, though just a bit chubby. He looked around himself, and began shouting angrily in German. Strangely – it must be a quality of whatever plane we were on – I understood him. He spent a full two minutes insulting the intelligence of the choir director, but he looked aghast ( as much as a ghast can look aghast) when one of the violinists fell over dead.

This bright ghost immediately went over to one of the Oboe players and ripped their instrument away (taking a couple of fingers, as I understand. Tragically, they will not play again). He began to play the instrument himself, and it seemed to be the anchor for all the rest of the music, for the choir and the remaining orchestra followed his lead. As Bach faded (For I was now certain that the specter was the Mage himself, or a powerful reflection of him), the house lights seemed to come up on the performance, and the music also slowed. When the music finally encountered a full stop and released it’s performers we were back in the church where we had started. The Oboe, still glowing, clattered to the ground.

The incident was hushed up, of course. The director still directs, I understand, though he pales if he looks too long at an Oboe. And he refuses to play Bach.

Oh wait… there is a word for that. Caroling.

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