Stand Up Straight and Sing!

by Jessye Norman

  So my parents were not surprised that I had discovered Hinduism and thought it would be a fine religion for us. They were curious to know, though, just how much I knew about the subject. “Now, what do you know about Hinduism?” they asked. “And where in the world, particularly, is this practiced?” I didn’t hesitate to head back to the encyclopedia for more information, and in my research, I learned a little about India but also about that state of joy—that wonderful feeling that God wants for us. In my own innocent way, I wanted joy to be expressed in a way that I could understand. I did not know anything about crying with joy; I thought tears always indicated sadness.

  Though I certainly came to have much more knowledge and understanding of the subjects of Christianity and Hinduism, reincarnation and joy, than I did when I was on the cusp of being a teenager, I’ve never stopped being curious about spirituality, religion, and cultural differences that seem to prompt the way we interact with one another. Energy is alive. On those occasions when there is that exchange of positive energy between myself and what is happening onstage and those watching and listening and receiving it, it is in those moments that my spirit thrives. The connection with the audience is there as clearly in the depth of silence that exists as in the applause.

  I was encouraged to trust in this energy, in the secret of that silence, the power of stillness and slow movement, in my first production with Robert Wilson, which was called Great Day in the Morning, and took place in Paris in 1982. It was here that I learned the “for a lifetime” lesson not to allow the audience’s response to determine the tempo of my presentation.

  Great Day in the Morning was, in many ways, a piece before its time. The aim of the production was to demonstrate how Spirituals were created in the lives of the enslaved—in the course of a day’s work, on a long walk to church, during a moment of joy with one’s family and loved ones. Alas, the audiences that came to view our work in the first nights of the performance were not pleased. Either they were there to see what they had come to expect of a Robert Wilson production, sans someone singing, or to witness a recital of mine. Of course, this production was neither of these things, and word spread in Paris as to what was truly afoot at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and how unhappy our early patrons were (which Parisian audiences have no difficulty at all expressing: cue Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps and the riot that occurred at its 1913 premiere in that very theater).

  But by the end of the run of Great Day in the Morning, the audience had turned their own stillness, their own listening, into eruptions of approval following the final song in our presentation, “Amazing Grace.” Under Bob Wilson’s direction, I sang this unaccompanied while pouring, over the course of a full four minutes, a pitcher of water, lighted from above and below, onto a Lucite table, the water and light flowing seamlessly from pitcher to tabletop to floor, the audience becoming a part of that continuous stream. We had, in the end, become one.

  One still encounters people who believe mistakenly that “Amazing Grace” is a Spiritual. While discussing the song with a journalist in London recently, I was stunned to find that he knew nothing of the eighteenth-century British slave-ship captain John Newton, a devout nonbeliever, who saw the transportation of a free people from their own land into bondage in the United Kingdom and beyond as a means of making a living. Newton’s human sensibilities were kept apart from this endeavor. As it happens when the universe is determined to teach us a lesson once and for all, a mighty storm developed on the sea during one of the captain’s crossings from Africa to Europe. John Newton was certain that he would not only lose his precious cargo, but his own life as well.

  In that moment, in that instance of clarity with himself and with his trade, he wrote the words that the entire world now sings:

  Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.

  I once was lost, but now I’m found; was blind, but now I see.

  Some claim the melody for “Amazing Grace” to have originated in John Newton’s home country of Scotland. I choose to think that the meter, the shape of the melody itself and its resemblance to so much West African folk music, rose from the bowels of a slave ship, with human beings arranged so as to accommodate as many as possible on a single crossing, but still living and breathing through the miracle of a song, a melody, humming, as there was often no common language, yet making music from the deepest parts of their beings. Living energy, undimmed by even such circumstances, from one human being to another.

  WHEN WE REALIZE that energy is truly a living thing and that it travels a room as easily as it does a whole town—or an ocean—we come to understand that our thoughts have power and consequence, that we can extend loving kindness through positive thoughts, through openness of mind and spirit. And well we should! When an audience is engaged truly in a performance, this offering of positive energy can make all the difference in elevating the level of the performance from something that is merely good to something that is extraordinary. I do think that a performer, in order to remain at a high level of artistic achievement, must feed the spirit continually. The exchange of energy between performer and audience replenishes both.

  I am having a wonderful time with music that has been playing in my ear practically all my life but which I, until six or seven years ago, hardly ever performed.

  The wish to add more music to an already long list of repertoire became apparent to me during my research in preparing the festival for Carnegie Hall that took place in March of 2009: Honor! A Celebration of the African American Cultural Legacy. The idea of the program, as suggested in the title, was to honor the cultural contributions of African Americans to our world. From the time that Clive Gillinson, the artistic and executive director of Carnegie Hall, extended this amazing invitation to me in autumn 2006, I spent goodly amounts of time listening to recordings of the greats—in a range of musical genres—and decided then and there that I wanted to feel this music in my very being. Thus was born my first solo CD in about ten years, Roots: My Life, My Song.

  I thought it vital to share these songs with an audience. Studying and performing the music of the great Europeans is a grand pleasure in my life, an honor and a privilege. Adding jazz and songs from the American musical theater simply expanded and enlivened my own artistic growth. Offering even wider attention to the Spiritual was natural to me and relevant, as I’d grown up hearing my grandmother, my mother, and my aunts humming and singing these songs to themselves as they tended to their daily lives. When all is said and done, I am African, and I cannot think of a single reason why I should not celebrate this to the hilt. So when I sing a Spiritual, I am telling a most personal story. These cries, these longings, these testaments of faith are a part of my own DNA, and my goal is always that the audience understands the music in the same way that I understand it.

  In addition, I wish to help audiences appreciate the difference between a Spiritual—I use a capital S on purpose—and a gospel song. Whereas the whole world is filled with music of a sacred or spiritual nature, a Spiritual can only have been created by my ancestors, the slaves brought to a new land starting in the early 1600s, and their descendants up until 1865, the historical period of slavery in the United States. There were no trombones and Hammond organs to be had by them and no composers other than the heart longings of a people in bondage singing their way through the most challenging of human experiences. “Singing through,” not “singing themselves out” of the horror.

  The blues came next, and then more instruments helped bring jazz into being. These new instruments, first abhorred by churchgoers, soon found their way into the church, where Spirituals, in a new presentation, became the first gospel songs. Therefore, it is possible to take a Spiritual and turn it into a gospel song, but one cannot do the reverse. The Spirituals came first. The gospel song is often a modern version of a well-known Spiritual.

  If we are lucky as performers, the music and spirit together reveal themselves before our audiences, creating an added dime
nsion to the performance—an added dimension over which we have absolutely no control. For any undefined reason one can be ill at ease during a performance, or maybe the connection with the audience can be so visceral, so powerful, that some are inspired to come backstage and say something like “I know that you were singing that song especially for me tonight. I really felt that you were looking straight at me,” when in fact, you had been conscious of no such thing. When this happens, I am grateful for it. We are human beings, and this kind of connection sustains us in our humanity, and we are better for it.

  Indeed, such connections become all the more profound when the presentation is in a sacred space. Growing up, churchgoing and church activities made up the fabric of my daily life, and so I have always found singing in a church, in the great cathedrals of the world, to be experiences at once awe-inspiring and wondrously comforting. The grandeur of the spaces has never overtaken the sense of joy of being there. I seem to always know my way around these wonderful places. There are not the usual dressing rooms, and the pulpit more often than not serves as the stage. Lighting rigs are not often used, nor diffusion gels to flatter the face. And yet, somehow, the rector, pastor, or other church officials always feel compelled to make remarks prior to the performance. In other words, it’s just like home. My experiences in some of the world’s most beautiful, sacred spaces are every bit as treasured as they are memorable. In some, I sing, in some, I take part in fellowship, in others still, I mourn. I count each experience as a blessing.

  Some church edifices are so celebrated, so historic, that seeing them only from the outside can be a very moving experience. I will not soon forget the time I talked my way into the Sistine Chapel, in Vatican City, Italy, after visiting hours. When, finally, a security guard allowed me through those doors, I stood motionless for a long while just taking in the whole of it all. Through streaming tears, I looked up at a ceiling that was far larger than my art history books had led me to understand: the colors, the majesty of the frescoes, the detail. I can see this as clearly in my mind’s eye today as I did up close that fine afternoon. The security guard understood what I was experiencing and left me to my heightened emotions, my gratitude, and my even higher regard for one Michelangelo.

  I recall those same feelings the first time I performed an orchestral concert in the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris. I was standing on the built-up stage in front of the altar, at a great distance from but still directly in front of the famous Rose Window, the fifteenth-century masterpiece that had also been such a part of my art appreciation studies. The sight of it was so moving that I found it difficult to focus on anything else. The same goes for the flying buttresses of the cathedral’s exterior. Somehow, I managed to remain quiet in our rehearsals and concentrate on the work at hand.

  In England, the historic Canterbury Cathedral was the sacred space where I performed my first televised Christmas concert. I remember visiting the cathedral prior to our first rehearsal there and coming across a stone plaque in the floor, which read 1687. I thought, My word, here we have a church that is older than the United States! There was something magical in that.

  So, too, was the way that this particular Christmas concert came to be. I had a great deal of work to do in Europe and wanted a base from which to travel, and so I chose England. Knowing that I would be in Europe during Christmastime, I decided to rent a house in the country where friends might gather and we would have a lovely celebration of the holidays.

  Christmas magic is real.

  We gathered on Christmas Eve—had a fire ablaze in a large fireplace, and a huge, beautifully appointed tree standing in one corner, feathered underneath with beautifully wrapped packages. We had read some of the New Testament account of the Christmas story, and were planning to sing Christmas carols with the lovely piano that was just there next to the Christmas tree. Dinner was delicious, and some of us were off busily preparing coffee and dessert afterward when, suddenly, someone started playing the piano. The melody was unfamiliar to me, but those of us in food-preparation mode kept to the business at hand.

  In no hurry at all, we emerged finally with the last part of our meal prepared. It was then that Jane, a writer, and Don, a composer and arranger, announced that they had written a new Christmas carol, and that it would be called “Jessye’s Carol.” I did not take them seriously, but I was understandably curious as to what they had actually done. Indeed, in the time it took for us to prepare dessert, they had created this song:

  Green and silver,

  Red and gold.

  And a story borne of old;

  truth and love and hope abide, this Christmastide.

  The dessert waited as we all gathered around the piano to sing this new song! Afterward, I announced to those present: “Okay, from this song, we shall make a Christmas CD.”

  And we did; it is called Christmastide.

  The Canterbury Cathedral was a poignant choice for filming this work for television, as it had been an important landmark for American air pilots in World War II; the building gave them a precise calculation of their proximity to the sea and an absolute certainty of their location in the United Kingdom. So an American singing in this cathedral, sparked by a song created by two Brits, had a rather lovely symmetry to the circle of life. I was joined by the American Boychoir of Princeton, New Jersey, and the cathedral’s boys’ choir, who worked so wonderfully well together, with the cathedral’s gothic interior providing several beautiful places in which to record different segments of the program.

  We filmed in July, but with these massive edifices and their stone walls—in some places they are more than two feet thick—one could feel the chill, even in high summer, so our saying “Happy Christmas” to one another during that week of work did not seem in the least out of place. The plan was to perform the concert for a live audience and, if necessary, do retakes following the performance, the manner in which many such programs are prepared for television broadcast, generally. Preparation is key, so it goes without saying that our schedule was packed with rehearsals. On one particular day, I was in my “dressing room” during a rehearsal break, going over the words to oh so many songs, when I heard what sounded like a relatively tentative rap on my door. Then a slightly bolder one. I called out for the person to enter, and in walked about five of the young boys from the American boys’ choir. Immediately, I asked if anything was wrong. Right away, one of them answered, “Oh, no! We just wanted to come to visit you.”

  Flattered, I invited them in and tried to find enough chairs for everyone. Then one of the boys said, “Um, could we have a hug?”

  “Of course!” I said.

  So we all gathered around and gave one another big, strong hugs. Mind you, these youngsters were traveling with their chaperones and choir directors, but given their ages—between about seven and twelve—they had most probably not spent an entire week away from familiar surroundings or their parents. It was a perfectly delicious moment—one that will remain in the memory bank always.

  This beautiful story has a coda. Fast-forward ten or eleven years: there I am in the Lord & Taylor department store on Fifth Avenue in New York, with two or three days at the most before Christmas, trying to get all of my shopping done in this one afternoon. It was during the traditional workday and offices hadn’t yet closed for the holiday, so the store was not desperately crowded at the time, allowing for two salespeople in the men’s accessories department to help me find classic ties, gym socks, and all those other sundries that one wraps in pretty Christmas paper and places under the tree. In my shopping flurry, I spotted a beautiful young man in a lovely winter coat, carrying a briefcase, and to my surprise he was headed straight for me. He stopped just a few feet from where I was standing, placed his briefcase on the floor, and asked, “Do you still give hugs?”

  Now this, coming from such a gorgeous young man, caused me to have to gather my composure. “Now, this isn’t fair,” I said finally. “Tell me to which of my pals you are related. Come now, whose
son are you?”

  That beautiful smile reached across his face. “No, it’s not that. The time that I had a hug from you was in your dressing room in the Canterbury Cathedral in England.”

  I beamed. And he and I had a grand, grand hug, this old acquaintance, who was now at university with his eye on attending law school. After more talk of our memories of Canterbury, he took his leave.

  Talk about the magic of Christmas!

  I have had similar emotional experiences singing in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, and in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and Church of St. Ignatius Loyola, both in New York City, though the latter two were for much more somber occasions. My memory of St. Ignatius Loyola begins in the basement level of the church, where we gathered early one crisp, sunny morning. There were logistics to be reiterated and technical checks to perform. Media crews were everywhere. Organizers were busy behind the scenes, making sure that protocol was followed in every detail, as befitting a state funeral. After all, America’s very own “royal” was to be memorialized: the stunning Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

  It was her sister, Lee Radziwill, who had contacted me on behalf of the family: they were well aware of my fondness for Mrs. Onassis, and wished me to sing Schubert’s “Ave Maria.” Mrs. Onassis loved music, and dance most particularly, and adored talking with artists and being present for performances. Naturally, I was honored to have been asked to be a part of this celebration of the life of such a beloved person—one who had offered her kindness and friendship to me in ways that still make my heart sing.