Stand Up Straight and Sing!

by Jessye Norman

  I had rehearsed “Ave Maria” with the church organist, and was thankful for my practice of yoga, which helped me so very much in maintaining focus and concentration in the midst of all the activity in preparation for the service. Nothing was hurried or breathless; it was just very busy—quietly and methodically so. But I had to draw on something deep, something powerful, to make it through the emotional service. The church was hushed. I remember the presentation by Maurice Tempelsman, Mrs. Onassis’s longtime companion, of the Constantine Cavafy poem “Ithaka.” I still read it from time to time. I will always remember how utterly amazed I was by Caroline and John; they were so poised, so prepared. It was so moving to hear them speak at the service and to watch the splendid manner in which they conducted themselves in such circumstances.

  The priest provided a moment of levity during his homily. It was very evident from his remarks that this was a man who knew his parish well. A bright ray of sunshine fell across the congregation as he read the passage from John 14:2: “In my Father’s house are many mansions. . . . I go to prepare a place for you.” The priest then stated that he could only imagine the redecorating of those mansions that would take place in Heaven now that the great Jackie was in attendance. We were all given a moment to exhale, and to remember her as the gifted, remarkable woman who had touched the lives of so many people—even those who knew her only from a great distance.

  I was honored to sing for her. I was such an admirer, particularly of the little things, the nuances: I loved the way she pronounced the nickname of the President, as though it were spelled “Jahcke,” with a slight stretch on the “ahcke” part. There was limitless devotion in that pronunciation.

  Surely, singing at the memorial of this much loved First Lady of our country was one of those occasions where I had to remind myself of the reason I was there; I had a job to do. Otherwise, I would not have been able to utter a single note. In those moments, you have to say to yourself, Sing now, there will be time for a good cry later.

  That was 1994. In 2010, we would find ourselves again at St. Ignatius Loyola to say a final goodbye to the magnificent Lena Horne. Again the press was present in significant numbers, and friends from the music world and all other parts of Miss Horne’s rich, fantastic life filled the church. My friend and colleague Audra McDonald sang so beautifully. It was a privilege to be invited to sit with the family and to say goodbye to this adored friend.

  My first memory of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine is from my time as a student at the University of Michigan. I was in New York City, and had made my way uptown to have dinner with friends—fellow students with whom I was just becoming acquainted—and happened to find myself near the cathedral when who should bound across the street but jazz legend Duke Ellington. Although I had not seen this gorgeous man in person previously, I was certain of who he was from the moment I spotted him. It was 1968. I have since wondered if he could have been on his way to a rehearsal for the second of his three sacred music concerts—a thought that makes my heart smile. Indeed, the famed composer, pianist, and master of the big band premiered his Second Sacred Concert at the cathedral that year . . .

  It would be years later that I would have the privilege of singing in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, an honor offered to me on several occasions. One of the first was the memorial for Keith Haring, the graffiti and visual artist who used his artwork to advance his social activism. A friend tasked with organizing Keith’s May 1990 memorial asked me if I would be available to sing at the service, and I was pleased that I had that particular date free in my schedule. I knew of Haring’s work, of course, and had met him “across a crowded room” at some point, but was unaware that he had been such a supporter of my music making. So many young people and ambassadors of the arts filled that stunning space, sending a clear and powerful message about this life taken so young: Keith was loved and admired and respected. It was my honor to add to that message by lifting my voice in celebration of his life.

  Three years later, I would find myself in this same sacred space for yet another memorial, one that held special significance for me: the funeral service of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

  When my siblings and I were kids, my parents would speak of illustrious African Americans as if they knew them personally. They would relay news of these individuals from television, newspaper, or radio reports with such pride and earnestness that you would have thought them to be speaking of kin or, at the very least, members of our church or small community. It was all present and natural. We were made to feel that icons like Jackie Robinson, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Miss Rosa Parks—each of them—were close to us.

  Which is why the name Thurgood Marshall was as familiar to me as any of the names that made up our community, our world. He meant something to my family, to me, personally. And so of course I did not hesitate when Justice Marshall’s family asked me to sing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” at his memorial service.

  Having contemplated the deep meaning of this hymn and its significance to the life work of Justice Marshall, I pondered the manner in which I should present the piece. And for the first and only time in my professional singing life, I accompanied myself with a tambourine. Considering the citizens whose plights drove the actions of this great man, simplicity was to be the order of the day, a tambourine more fitting, more suitable, more appropriate than the tremendous organ of the cathedral. I wished to serve simply as a conduit for the hymn’s words. I was so honored to be there.

  I was honored equally when invited to be part of the festivities surrounding Nelson Mandela’s second visit to the United States after nearly three decades of imprisonment. Everyone wanted to meet and experience this man and I was no exception. I had been given the high honor of singing for him a few days prior to his visit to the cathedral, in Harvard Yard, on a tremendously vibrant early autumn day. The quadrangle was filled to the brim with thousands of people; the very air seemed tinged with joy. I had hoped privately that upon meeting Mr. Mandela I would say something sensible, that I would not be so overwhelmed by his presence that I would flub my greeting. I quickly realized that my worry was for naught. There was a calm, a quietude, a grounded strength in this man that seemed to fan out to all those in his midst. His face almost always looked as though he was about to break into a full smile. We speak often of a person’s aura; Nelson Mandela’s aura was one of utter peace.

  Mr. Mandela was given an honorary doctorate at Harvard that day; he made the kind of remarks that one wishes to be able to recall word for word. He offered the prose of a forgiving spirit, the poetry of a heart so connected to goodness as to be free of anger, with not so much as a hint of desire for revenge. I was happy that I could offer my song without bursting into monumental tears of joy.

  At the cathedral some days later, I would have the privilege again to sing for him, and this time, there was even a moment for us to speak together at more length. What luck! His wife of only three months, Graça Machel, was so very kind in her words about my singing in Harvard Yard, and Mr. Mandela asked me, breaking into that wonderful, full smile of his, “Where does all that voice come from?”

  “You just stand there and out it comes!” I was thrilled that he could think my singing effortless under these most moving and thought-provoking circumstances. I was elated to have had that quiet moment with them both.

  Though I have the privilege to sing in and visit some of the world’s most beautiful churches, Augusta still has some of the most important sacred spaces in my life. One in particular—First Baptist Church—stands out, but for different reasons that speak intimately to my life growing up in the segregated South. Although First Baptist has long been a jewel of my hometown, it was not until I was an adult and a professional singer that I had so much as seen the inside of it—by choice of both the church’s leaders and my own. I’ll explain.

  I had been invited to perform a Christmas concert to be telecast by Georgia Public Television, so the decision
to mount this in a church in my own hometown seemed an obvious choice. For the organizers, First Baptist Church was the perfect venue, and church officials were in swift agreement. The sanctuary would provide a lovely background on which to offer the kind of visual effects so important for television, plus it was located out of the way of airline traffic patterns and other potentially disruptive urban noise. My performing there made sense to all those involved. All those except me.

  First Baptist Church stood tall and majestic when I was growing up in Augusta, then an unabashedly segregated town where separation of the races was more apparent on a Sunday than almost any other day. It was a way of life that was embraced completely. And so you can imagine that there were one or two surreal moments for me in returning to the town of my birth and offering a program of joy to the world in a church in which I would not have been welcomed during the time that I actually lived there.

  It was the support of family and friends that brought me to a place of comfort and calm within myself. Many of the songs on the program were those that I sang as a youngster in Augusta—“I’ll Walk with God,” “Bless This House,” and “The Lord’s Prayer.” In the end, I would sing in this beautiful church with immense joy.

  The energy and spirit I feel when I am communing in a sacred space, whether in the pulpit of a small church or in a vast cathedral before an audience of thousands, is a feeling very much like the energy and spirit I felt in my favorite tree oh so long ago, when I knew, for sure, that God is everywhere. This energy finds its way into so many corners of my being because I want it; indeed, I seek it. I believe in the powers of meditation and prayer.

  There is a church in Berlin known as the Remembrance Church, which I attended when I lived in Germany and where, on Saturdays, services were offered in English. Although the church was bombed by the Allied forces during World War II, it remains incredibly beautiful, with the old part of the structure that survived the war complemented by a modern sanctuary. I spent many hours there, thinking about the devastation of war in that then-divided city, and about the endurance of faith.

  In another country, I had one of the most beautiful spiritual experiences ever in a place that was not a church at all. It occurred while I was sitting in a magnificent garden in Marrakesh. It was my first time there and I was overwhelmed by the glory of that illustrious city and of the garden of the famous hotel there. I had arisen earlier than is normal when I am on tour, as I wished to see more of the grounds than I had been able to view from the windows of my accommodations. I walked around the garden, taking it all in, wondering what some of the fantastic flowering plants and shrubs were called. I found a beautiful place to sit and soon could hear the sound of church bells in the distance. I had noticed a Catholic church nearby. Some time later, I was in conversation in French with one of the gardeners, a young man who seemed eager to talk.

  After a short while, however, chanting by a male voice could be heard somewhere off in the distance. The gardener interrupted our chat, walked over to the cart holding his gardening tools, took out his prayer mat, placed it neatly on the ground, and knelt to observe his midmorning prayers. When he was finished, he returned his prayer mat to its place on the cart and resumed our chat. What a marvelous thing I had just witnessed: the call to prayer for the Christian church and the time of prayer for those practicing Islam. I thought, why cannot the rest of the world be like this? Your prayers, my prayers, our prayers.

  I told the gardener how much I was enjoying the gorgeous surrounds, and he responded so humbly by saying: “It is a pleasure to work in such a beautiful place.”

  For me, this is the essence of spirituality and it can be found anywhere, in any corner. Everywhere. If only we are quiet enough and take the time to appreciate our differences and celebrate our common traits.

  Still, I admit that I am very much a work in progress. That is simply the nature of faith. I have a very good friend I have known since my college days who happens to be a priest, and he is truly a rock in my life. He tells me that there are times in all of our lives—even among those who are spiritual leaders—when faith is questioned and challenged. He assures me that such questions, even the occasional doubt, are a normal part of being human, fallible.

  But just as easy as it is to find ourselves in a spiritual quandary, so, too, can we be full of gratitude for God’s favor. This I learned from the Dalai Lama in 2012, when he was presented with the Templeton Prize at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. I had the privilege of singing “Amazing Grace” just before His Holiness delivered his stirring remarks, and “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hand” directly after the speech. He insisted that he was not born “a special person”—that it would not have occurred to him as a young child that he would be the leader of a religious order or that people outside his Buddhist faith would consider him to be of any importance. He insisted, too, that he is not at all important today. Instead, the Dalai Lama said, Buddha is important, as is faith, and each of us needs to arrive at a point where we are able to extend kindness and compassion to everybody, not just people we like or those to whom we are related or people for whom we feel a kinship of some kind. “If you want to be happy, be compassionate,” he stated. And because he possesses a wonderful sense of humor, he went on to say, “If you want to be really happy, then be really compassionate!”

  We all are infants in that measure of faith. And I believe we need to recognize that reaching such a level of spiritual development is not an easy task, and most often—not sometimes, but most often—we will come up short. But it is the trying that’s important.

  It occurs to me that a performance venue could well be considered a spiritual space, depending on one’s personal experience. By the time I was a student at university, the wide world seemed to present itself in tremendous new ways. For example, I found that with a student ID card, it was possible to study at the Library of Congress. You could arrive, find a free space at a table, relay to a staff member the reference book required, and have that book brought to your table. I was in Heaven!

  With this same card, air travel was made possible due to the low costs offered to students. One of the places that held utter fascination was, of course, New York City and all the attractions of the place. None was regarded with more reverence by us than Carnegie Hall. On those occasions when meager funds made travel to the city possible, this hall was the destination of choice.

  On one of our first visits, I became acquainted with the houseman, George. He understood immediately that we were dependent on having someone look out for us and offer us a ticket or two to a performance. He was sensitive to our circumstances and always arranged for us to come through the door and stand at the back of the hall until empty seats could be spotted. So that we would not suffer embarrassment in having to be asked to give up a seat, we could not take an unoccupied seat until after the intermission. And these were seats in the orchestra section of the house! George became our friend and superb ally, and it still warms my heart to know that there was not a single time that we, three or four of us, arrived at Carnegie without being able to witness the performance.

  Time passed, and it became possible for us to purchase seats far upstairs, where the sound was just as wonderful and where we felt proud that we had actually paid our way. George was a steadfast presence in the lobby, as welcoming as ever.

  Ten years would pass from my being an undergraduate at Howard hoping to gain entrance to view a performance, to my finding the great George waiting for me at the stage entrance, as he wished to show me to my dressing room. “This evening,” he said, “we shall take a different entrance into the hall. Let me show you the way.” It was the spring of 1975, my debut with the American Symphony Orchestra on the main stage of Carnegie Hall. My friend George was there. Oh, yes, for me, this hall will always be a spiritual space.

  Die Allmacht • FRANZ SCHUBERT • The Almighty

  ***

  Gross ist Jehova, der Herr! Denn Himmel Great is God, our Lord. Heaven and Earth />
  Und Erde verkünden seine Macht. declare His power.

  Du hörst sie im brausenden Sturm, You hear His strength in the raging storm

  In des Waldstroms laut aufrauschendem Ruf. In the majestic call of the resounding forests.

  Gross ist Jehova, der Herr! Great is God, our Lord,

  Gross ist Seine Macht! Great is His power.

  Du hörst sie im grünenden Waldes Gesäusel; You hear Him in the green rustling leaves of

  Siehst sie in wogender Saaten Gold, the forest, and see Him in the gold of

  In lieblicher Blumen glühendem Schmelz, Waving blades of grain

  Im Glanz des sternebesäten Himmels! In the bountiful loveliness of flowers,

  Furchtbar tönt sie im Donnergeroll In the glow of a star-filled sky.

  Und flammt in des Blitzes His power is feared in the sound of thunder

  Schnell hinzukendem Flug. And the sight of flames in lightning’s fast flight.

  Doch kündet das pochende Herz dir fühlbarer noch Yet, it is more deeply felt in the beating of the heart

  Jehovas Macht, des ewigen Gottes. The power of God, the eternal God.

  Blickst du flehend empor Look to God in prayer

  Und hoffst auf Huld und Erbarmen. for His protection and Grace.

  5

  Racism as It Lives and Breathes

  “SOMETIMES I FEEL LIKE A MOTHERLESS CHILD”

  Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,