Posted by
AudiR10TDI on Thursday, December 14, 2006 7:32:40 AM
This weekend in Toronto my brother and I will attend a sellout "Sing Along Messiah" with 2700 of our best friends. This is the only Classical Christmas musical event I have ever seen with scalpers out front and eager people lining up to patronize them. This will be the fortieth year I have sung "Messiah", an Oratorio that came to Handel in a thunderclap and was feverishly written down by him in a marathon worthy of the Paris-Dakar Rally Raid. The mere idea that some group of humorless Taliban could threaten this event because any music that does not consist of huffs and grunts interspersed with obscenity and blasphemy to a grinding thumping beat must be destroyed would be enough to set even the people of Toronto, timorous as they are, into the streets. I can imagine those 2700 people standing in the public square, with the fearless choirmaster of Tafelmusik in his Handel costume, defiantly raising a rendition of the "Hallelujah Chorus" that would be heard in Ottawa and Beiruit and Baghdad as a shot heard round the world.
In fact, should the day come when the Taliban try to shut Christians out of the Christmas Season by banning the singing of "Messiah" in public halls, I recommend we gather in every public square in America and, at a fixed time on Christmas Eve, fill America from shore to shore with the defiant good news that "He shall reign forever and ever -- HALLELUJAH!"
That ought to wake up the slumbering virgins whose lamps are almost out of oil, to the realization that indeed their King is at the gates and they'd better get on their feet and prepare to welcome Him home before their lights go out for eternity.
Wouldn't you love to hear that? I would. In fact, why not get every radio station and speaker system in the country involved as well? Can you imagine what that would do to fire up the troops in the Army of the Lord? I can.
All together now: HALLELUJAH! |