a tempo Summer 2008

Reflections on a choral tour

Choristers in Lucerne

—Ellen Dalton, budget coordinator

Music has the power to transcend differences in language and culture and history and bring people together as one.

The profound truth of that statement was realized by a combined group of 27 members of the BGSU Collegiate Chorale and over 40 community singers and “tag-alongs” who gathered at Detroit airport on June 30 to embark on a 12-day tour of Europe billed as Lucerne 2008. For some it was their first trip outside the US, others were veteran travelers. Community singers ventured from as far as Dowagiac, Mich., as well as from Columbus, New Bremen, Toledo and Bowling Green, Ohio.

The details of the tour: The first four days were spent in Lucerne, Switzerland, rehearsing for and presenting the Lucerne 2008 Choral Festival concert. Organized by Music Celebrations International, the festival include nearly 300 singers from 11 choruses from all over the U.S.A. accompanied by Lucerne’s Orchestra Santa Maria. The festival artistic directors were Dr. William Skoog from BGSU and Dr. Hilary Apfelstadt from The Ohio State University. It was the invitation to Skoog to direct this festival that provided the impetus for the trip. The concert was held in the Kultur- und Kongresszentrum Luzern (KKL), located on the shore of Lake Lucerne. The KKL concert hall is reputed to have perfect acoustics.

Joshua Jones’ story

On the second day in Lucerne, I was on my own searching for a quick lunch. I noticed across the street from the hotel a pizza place and several of my friends sitting there. I stopped and saw it was a little shop, no larger than a college dorm room, which was run by a single lady who spoke no English. I looked at the menu and the prices were pretty good, so I ordered a pizza and took it back to my hotel room for lunch.

Later that night, after rehearsal, some of my friends and I were looking for a late night recovery snack. I told them about the pizza place and a handful of us headed there. The lady who was working earlier had been joined by her husband. There were already a few people in the shop, so they put some tables together for us right outside the door. Kristen Basore had just finished taking a summer German 101 course, so she helped with the ordering.

Eventually, the people in the shop left and the couple invited us in. They washed plates for us and set the table. The pizzas came and they were delicious. After we finished eating, we all gathered our Swiss francs and paid, leaving a tip comparable to a tip that one would leave in the country. Immediately the husband said nein nein nein and told us it was too much in German. We replied yes yes and all tried to state with our broken German that it was wonderful pizza and service.

After we finally got them to accept the tip, we stood and prepared to leave. The couple stopped us and insisted that we all stay for coffee or tea, and they brought us chocolate we all enjoyed a nice evening together. Eventually, the couple went outside to escape the heat of the small pizza shop, so we decided we would sing for them. We had two music folders and started with the Thompson Alleluia. They liked it so well that we also sang another song, and then another, and then another until we had sung every a cappella song we had and every accompanied song that we could fudge to be a cappella, including two movements of a Bach cantata. They clapped and cheered for us and loved every minute. They asked us where we were from, and Kristen told them that we were from the United States and were singing here in Lucerne. She also invited them to the festival concert the next day and told them what time it began. Eventually, it was almost time to close, so we gathered our music and umbrellas and went back to the hotel, reminiscing the entire way about how much fun we had just had. It just goes to prove that even though we spoke very little German and they spoke even less English, music and a positive spirit are tools more valuable than language. With those, we were able to touch lives.

From Lucerne, the group traveled to Venice to participate in a mass in the Basilica di San Marco in the heart of the city. It is quite an honor to be invited to sing in this famous cathedral. Over the next several days the group sang in three historic churches in Austria as part of the American Celebration of Music in Austria—the Graz Dom in Graz and Stephansdom and Karlskirche in Vienna. On the road from Vienna to Budapest, Hungary, the group stopped at Eisenstadt to tour the Esterhazy Palace and sing informally in the Haydnsaal, where many of Haydn’s works were premiered during the more than 30 years he was employed by the Price of Esterhazy as the court musician. The last stop on the tour was Budapest, where the singers participated in an evening mass at Mattias Church followed by a concert. Mattias Church was originally built as a mosque by the Turks and was later converted to a Christian church and is the site where Habsburg emperors were crowned kings of Hungary.

In each city, besides the performances, the group enjoyed formal tours, including a trip via boat, cog railway and cable car, to the top of Mount Pilatus outside Lucerne, and opportunities for informal sightseeing and sampling of the local cuisines. Tour guides provided much historical information about each city and country. Even good things must come to an end, and July 12 found the group heading back to Detroit.

While these details give an idea of the scope and range of the tour, they don’t begin to describe the impact on either the tour participants or those who attended the concerts and gave every evidence of very much enjoying the choral performances. Community member Randy LaFond, for example, talked about the emotional impact of walking into the church (Stephansdom) where his grandmother and great-grandmother, who lived in Vienna, quite likely worshipped. An elderly woman, who sat near him, had tears in her eyes as she told him many visiting choirs sang there, but the BG group was the best she had heard. Singers had tears in their eyes from the emotion of singing in St. Mark’s in Venice. The largest audience was in Vienna, where people remembered the BGSU choir that had sung there in 2006.

Students learned to deal with unfamiliar currencies (the greatest challenge was Hungary, where 250 forints equal an Euro, and an Euro is about US$1.60 —try doing that mental math quickly), places where English was not the primary language, although most people who deal with tourists speak English, and cultural differences (What is that second toilet-looking thing in the bathroom? Why do I have to put my hotel room card in the slot to make the lights work?). The accompanying story by Joshua Jones, chorale member and senior music education major, illustrates what the students gained from this trip.

The fellowship among group members was remarkable, particularly between students and community singers. Students expressed their gratitude that community members with travel experience helped them over some of the humps of dealing with European travel, currency and culture and filling out customs forms. Having community singers supporting them inspired them to sing even better. Community singers noted that students brought youthful energy and great musical talent; they enjoyed the opportunities to hear the Chorale members sing alone in concerts as well as singing with them. Singing together gave students and community members a common bond. Everyone made new friends in both groups. Students were more likely to bring their laptop computers and were generous about letting community singers use them to check their email. Then there were the lively late night euchre games…

On July 13, the group members, returning jet-lagged, are resuming their normal lives, doing laundry, downloading digital photos—students returning to families, summer jobs or the search for post-graduation employment, community singers returning to families and jobs, stepping cautiously on the scale with averted eyes, sorting through mail—while themes from the concert pieces run through their heads, but none of us are the same people who left on June 30. Names and faces are the same, but we have all been forever changed, broadened and enriched by the music, the fellowship, the experiences that we shared over those 12 days, which no one outside the group can fully appreciate. The personal growth and the precious memories will endure long after the chocolates have been consumed, and I know when I hear any of these pieces of music sung in the Lucerne 2008 concerts, my emotions will take over and fill me with wonderful memories.

Issue Date: Tuesday 5 August 2008 | Contact the CMA | Disclaimer