A Facebook friend sent along a link to this video a few days ago, and OS has been meditating upon since seeing it. It's a 1950 recording of a German boy named Peter Schreier, singing one of the alto arias from Bach's St. John Passion--Es ist vollbracht--It is finished.
Schreier grew up, and became one of the great tenors of the twentieth century. It's easy to hear the promise in that boy's voice as he sings.
What struck OS most was not just the boy's voice. It was the boy's voice, recorded so beautifully in 1950 Dresden, still in rubble from the British fire-bombing of World War II. It was a miracle he was alive, and that Bach was still being played, sung and recorded in that place that year.
The video is worth viewing for the beauty of the music, and for the photos that pan as the music plays. The most telling is a shot of the boys choir in their cassocks, outside the church, singing in a rubble-filled street. They literally sang Bach amongst the ruins of one of the world's great cities. They kept showing up, despite the devastation around them, and the losses they had suffered, to sing Bach in church.
OS has friends who recently visited Dresden and Leipzig, and attended concerts and services in the old Lutheran churches. They came back with reports that faith and hope were alive and well in those buildings, in contrast to the weary cynicism encountered in The West.
Easter approaches, and OS wishes his readers a blessed one. We live in much more comfort, most of us, than those children in Dresden, but to hold to a Christian faith here increasingly means singing in the ruins of a culture that decided to self-destruct.
The message is--It is finished. Evil cannot possibly win in the end, because death itself has been conquered. And we will not always sing in the ruins. There is a day and time appointed when all will be set right.
Until then, though, we sing.
Lyrics:
Es ist vollbracht!
O Trost vor die gekränkten Seelen!
Die Trauernacht
Läßt nun die letzte Stunde zählen.
Der Held aus Juda siegt mit Macht
und schließt den Kampf.
Es ist vollbracht!
Translation:
It is fulfilled!
O hope for ev'ry ailing spirit!
The night of grief
Is now its final hours counting.
The man of Judah wins with might
And ends the fight.
It is fulfilled!
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