A Matter of Dimension

Felix Mendelssohn; There Shall A Star Come Out of Jacob; Chorus and Orchestra of The Choral Arts Society of Washington; Norman Scribner, conducting

In the summer of 1979, I went to Lutheran bible camp in the Black Hills of South Dakota. They called it Outlaw Ranch. My fellow campers and I had a blast. In addition to daily bible studies, we swam, we hiked, we rode horses and we even howled at the moon. On one memorable day, we hiked to the top of Harney Peak, the highest point between Pike’s Peak and somewhere in the Alps. I remember feeling like the whole world had gathered at my feet. My dad had let me borrow the pair of binoculars that he had brought home from Japan during the Korean War. He had given them to my grandfather. After Grandpa died, Dad got them back. He handed them to me and said, “If you lose them, don’t come home.” Uffda. Before coming home we stopped to see Mt. Rushmore.

In the fall of 1982, I represented Sioux Valley High School, this time singing the bass part, in our quartet for the South Dakota All-State Chorus. Mr. T. drove us out to the Black Hills to convene with nearly one thousand young singers in the Rushmore Plaza Civic Center in Rapid City, South Dakota. Dr. Lee Kjelson from the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami rehearsed and conducted the large ensemble. Of the four times that I had the honor to participate in this annual event, only once did we sing two combined numbers with the All-State Orchestra. Dr. Kjelson wanted us to have the opportunity to perform two first-class choral wonders. Of course, George Frederic Handel’s “Hallelujah” Chorus from “Messiah” presides at the Table of World Famous Choral Numbers. And to cut our teeth on this treasure with such gargantuan forces took the breath right out of each one of us.

But the one that I left the civic center humming came from Felix Mendelssohn’s unfinished oratorio "Christus". “There Shall A Star Come Out Of Jacob” comes to us from Numbers 24:17, and joins a host of other prophesies scattered throughout the Old Testament that point the way to first a manger, last a cross, and in between them a profusion of events that define the life of one born both human and divine.

Near as I can tell, Mr. Mendelssohn composed this treasure using an English translation of the text, weaving a lyrical melody for the title portion of the text, and constructing a much more rigid framework on which to scale an attack “with might destroying princes and cities.” True to his musical constitution, Mr. Mendelssohn pays homage to one of his spiritual mentors, Johann Sebastian Bach, by closing with a bold chorale:

As bright the Star of morning gleams,


So Jesus sheddeth glorious beams 


of light and consolation. 


Thy Word, O Lord,


Radiance darting, truth imparting,


gives salvation;


Thine be praise and adoration!

On the afternoon before the final concert, Mr. T. took us up to see Mt. Rushmore. Mom and Dad and I saw the four Presidents on our way home from moving my sister to Missoula, MT, in 1996. Naturally the sheer size of this larger than life sculpture impacted me in different ways each time I viewed it. One looks at art and the world in wildly different ways at the varying ages of fourteen, seventeen and thirty-one. But the last visit allowed me to visit this work of art with a level of artistic maturity that let me compare its sheer scope of aesthetic and dimension with that of, say, Handel’s “Messiah”, thinking that a musical marvel of the magnitude of “Messiah” and its nearly two hour long performance time comes closest to matching Mt. Rushmore in its dimension. Or maybe Wagner’s Ring Cycle. But I’ve come to realize that, when it comes to the width and breadth of integrity that an artist brings to his or her work, size pertains only to the amount of attention the artist requires to receive the impact of the message.

That Mr. Mendelssohn never completed his oratorio “Christus” detracts nothing from “There Shall A Star Come Out Of Jacob”. It contains just as much music as the composer requires. And it stands in a place of honor on my iPod: next to giants.

Credits: To Gutzon Borglum, for thinking big.