A Whirlwind Global Tour

Several years ago, the New Republic had on its cover a drawing of Beethoven dressed and painted as a Native American. It was meant as a warning from the weekly magazine about where the Western tradition was headed in an age of indiscriminate multiculturalism. Well, Sunday, at what could be considered the first concert of the 21st century, that age arrived. And not to worry, Beethoven is doing just fine.

The extraordinary event was a gala afternoon and evening opening, at the Hollywood Bowl, of the World Festival of Sacred Music--the Americas. It was a concert like no other. For nearly four hours, a cross-section of sacred musical traditions--Balinese, Native American, Hawaiian, Tibetan, Brazilian, Hebraic, Sufi, Mixtec, gospel--paraded in front of the famous shell. The Dalai Lama was on hand to offer his own particular brand of inspiration. Beethoven was the closing act with his Ninth Symphony performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen.

The Ninth Symphony is the icon of Western music. Not only was it the grandest statement in public symphonic music in its time, its choral finale, with poetry by Friedrich Schiller, is a call to the joyous union of universal brotherhood that set a high moral tone for an age. The scope of the symphony, written 175 years ago, has completely pervaded global consciousness. All symphonic music since is a reaction to it in one way or another. The storage capability of the compact disc was designed specifically to hold this work, which usually runs between 70 and 80 minutes. The Ninth has thus become a universal musical unit of length.

And yet just about anything can be, and is, branded onto a compact disc these days. A CD of Beethoven’s Ninth, in the record store, is one disc among thousands. Just as the New Republic feared, Beethoven’s voice is one among a great many.

Certainly that was the sense of Sunday, which was intended to demonstrate that there are no hierarchies, that every culture has its own path to the divine. Which made all of us tourists on Sunday. The crowd of 15,000 watched and listened, often in wonder, as the yellow-skirted Halau O Kekuhi danced and chanted traditional Hawaiian epics; as yellow-hatted monks from Tibetan monasteries intoned their soulful chords of vibrating harmonics; as Ali Jihad Racy swirled ecstatic Sufi melodies on his flutelike nay. It joined in when the tradition was closer to home, clapping along with the cantorial singing of Chazzan Yaakov Motzen or dancing in the aisles to an interdenominational gospel choir.

No one, of course, can really make sense of it all, especially in quick, 15-minute segments of this global tour. The best advice came from the Dalai Lama in a brief address: Widen your minds.

It is probably safe to say that Beethoven’s Ninth had never had such competition as this. By the time the Philharmonic, the choruses (the Los Angeles Master Chorale, the Paul Smith Singers and the Korean Master Chorale) and the soloists (Christine Goerke, Carmella Jones, Barry Banks and Hakan Hagegard) filed on stage, the crowd had had a very full day, beginning with waiting in long lines to get through security in force because of the Dalai Lama’s presence. Beethoven appeared after the warm sun had set and a certain exhaustion had set in. The crowd sank in its seats.

But something else, I think, had sunk in as well--even down in the expensive lower boxes where spirituality was not seen as incompatible with lavish picnicking, preening minor celebrities and cell phone conversations between nearby boxes. Salonen’s performance was fresh and full of original ideas. It had a gripping rhythmic vitality and focus. Salonen brought out inner details, particularly in the brass and winds that had an almost hypnotic intensity. The finale was a thrill.

But more than that, it became possible to begin hearing in the symphony echoes of much that had preceded it. Beethoven’s call for brotherhood is, of course, the same as the Dalai Lama’s for universal compassion. But the awe-inspiring chordal expansions of the symphony’s opening also share a sound and spirit with Tibetan monks’ chanting. The cosmic dance in the rhythms in Beethoven’s scherzo and those of the Balinese gamelan don’t clash. Beethoven weaves warm ornaments around his melodies in the slow movement, as Racy does on his nay. The gospel choir and the choruses in Beethoven are after the same ecstatic moment.

The world in the 21st century will surely be a different place than it is now, and Beethoven will surely be heard in a different way than he is now (just as he has been heard in a different way in the 20th than he was in his own lifetime). The happy news from the World Festival of Sacred Music, which continues all over town this week, is that Beethoven will be heard and that the adventure has just begun.

* The World Festival of Sacred Music--the Americas continues through Sunday. Hotline: (310) 208-2784.https://www.wfsm.org/americas