DUMMERSTON — The influence of the life of Blanche Moyse on others is profound and is going to go on for a long time.
Let me make a personal testimony. During the almost 30 years during which I was a member of the Blanche Moyse Chorale under her direction, she influenced and shaped my life in ways that went far beyond the music which we rehearsed and performed. She is one of the most important people in my life.
The music was, of course, of tremendous importance in itself. First of all, she really brought me into the world of Johann Sebastian Bach in a way that no one ever had before. I am a Protestant minister, and I knew something of the contribution Bach had made to Lutheran hymnody and his great choral dramas of Christ's passion. But I had never known anyone until Blanche who was, in effect, a passionate and devoted member of “The Church of J.S. Bach.”
Bach was her gateway to that realm of everything that is mysterious, awesome, wonderful, good, beyond thought and words - the reality to which I would give the name “God.” Blanche was deeply religious, but not in a conventional sense. She was drawn to, riveted by, and had given her skill, energy, indeed her very life, to the music of Bach, and to the ineffable reality which that music expresses.
Through her, I too became a devotee of Bach. The experience of singing Bach with Blanche, whether in countless rehearsals or in unforgettable concerts, I now regard as among my most profound religious experiences.
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Blanche once said to me that she would like to write a book about the relationship of music to life; how the fundamental principles of making music also work as principles necessary to the living of a good and productive everyday life. I wish she had written that book, but I think I know something of what it might have contained. For example:
• Details are of critical importance. When I first started singing with Blanche in 1975, I was over 40 years old and had done a lot of singing in choirs and glee clubs. But I soon realized that my singing experience had been very casual. Blanche taught me what it means to give immense attention to the most minute details of every aspect of singing, and that it is precisely those details that make the difference between really good and truly excellent.
For example, she would not accept singing even slightly off key. When she heard it, she stopped and called attention to it. At first, I could not even distinguish the fact that I was singing flat - what Blanche called “the bass disease.” At first I was sort of offended, and thought maybe she was talking about the guy next to me. But she made me (and others) wear a tape recorder around my neck during a rehearsal, and then when I listened to the tape, what she had heard became painfully obvious to me, and I worked to correct it.
It wasn't easy to do, but Blanche would walk the second mile with you as long as she knew you were making the effort. What was true of pitch was true of every other aspect of music-making: precise attention to the difference between a quarter note and an eighth note (how often did she cry out in despair during a rehearsal, “The eighth note after the dotted quarter is always late!); singing through a line of music, phrasing a line meaningfully, carefully articulating every sixteenth note in a long line of sixteenth notes (what is called a melisma) - very common in Bach.
As the Chorale developed and matured, it was this kind of attention to details that made us what we were.
• Hard work is its own reward: Blanche loved the kind of work that I have just described. It was not tedious for her; it was immensely enjoyable. It was the kind of work that could only be done in small groups, and thus she created weekly small-group sessions in her living room. You could choose a Wednesday or a Thursday night. Sometimes, you were the only one on your part – no place to hide!
For two hours, you gave microscopic attention to details, cleaning up what she called “the dirt,” i.e., minute instances of sloppiness. At the end of this labor, and it was indeed labor, she would give us her most radiant smile, and say, “That's the kind of work I love to do.” Those of us who came to share in her enthusiasm and sheer pleasure in that kind of work, and I count myself as one of them, surely learned one of the secrets to a happy life.
• Excellence is within anyone's reach if you are willing to work for it: Blanche believed that anyone could sing well if they tried. You could not change the vocal equipment you were born with, but with effort you could use well what you were given. She proved more than once that no one is “tone deaf.” She took persons who could not tell one note from another and, with their effort joined with hers, made them acceptable members of her chorus.
We could not all be a Pavarotti, but we could work for, and at times even achieve, excellence. To work with someone who believes that about you is life-changing. Then to go on to believe that about those with whom you work, is life-fulfilling. I think every member of the Blanche Moyse Chorale experienced moments of transcendent beauty – something that probably is given to the relatively few – simply because Blanche believed it was possible, and we gave ourselves to that belief.
A deep love for something is more satisfying than professional accomplishment. Blanche loved to work with us amateurs, because, as she would say, “you don't think you're good,” and therefore we were teachable and she could work with us.
She loved the professional musicians who made up her orchestra, of course, and they loved her, but she always wanted to do more with them than they were able or willing to give. She would have gladly rehearsed the orchestra hundreds of hours if she could have done so.
But she gave her life to an amateur chorus not because she couldn't get a job as a full-time conductor of professionals. I'm sure she could have.
She worked with us because it was deeply satisfying to accomplish with us a union of musical excellence, emotional authenticity and spiritual depth - something that a deep love for the music of Bach demands but is rarely achieved. She admired the incredible musicianship of European choruses, but she found them cold and was unmoved by them. I think she felt - and members of the audience who were in a position to know (including some New York critics) confirmed this - that at our finest moments in, say, The St. Matthew Passion, the Chorale excelled among the finest choruses of the world in touching and moving the heart with our music.
The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who in many ways was like Blanche in his passionate devotion to perfection and his almost brutal honesty, remarked in the preface to his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus that the purpose of his work would be achieved “if it gave pleasure to one person who read and understood it.”
The paradox of Blanche's life and work is that scores - perhaps hundreds of persons - can say, “I am that one person.”
We are blessed indeed.