So imagine you are an up-and-coming German musician writing music every week for your church choir in your modest burg. People start coming to your church to hear your hymns.
Word spreads. You find Italian musicians, start writing in that imported style, and get a great gig writing for a local opera company. Then you get a message through your social network to write for some English well-to-dos.
You pack up, hire a coach-and-four to get you through the Channel tunnel. Once you set foot in England, you discover another sound, another way to put voices together, mixing your German training, Italian operatic chops and the glories of the English choral singing.
You create something wholly new: a new sound, a new vision, international and greater than the sum of its parts. Later you get to write music for a big bash for Queen Elizabeth.
On Dec. 14, a Jakarta stalwart caught me via BlackBerry in transit from home to work reminding me to come. Oh, right, Pak! Of course, Handel's Messiah, yes, yes! Detour, slight embarrassment about showing up in work attire, dinnerless, but no matter.
For once, the Jakarta road-time warp worked in my favor and I arrived with minutes to spare. I indulged in the delicious spread at the Hotel Mulia before the Nusantara Symphony Orchestra's gala ritual of Christmas music.
Guest conductor Gabor Hollerung led four international soloists, the Nusantara Symphony Orchestra, and the combined Cordana youth and Satya Wacana university choirs for two half-concerts - Baroque to begin and jazzed up carols after the intermission.
Our own celeb of small screen and madrigal performances, Harland Hutabarat, was the bass soloist. Chia Fen Wu from Singapore carried the soprano arias with well-arced phrasing and strong mastery of the intricate filigree of Handel's Italianate solo lines.
The space challenged the players. Crisp, pointillistic and rapid-fire counterpoint from the strings needs a chamber hall with ceilings two-thirds the height, where the sound projects to the audience.
A minor inconvenience, though, as we were really all there for the choral numbers. The choir launched into the first chorus, "And the glory, the glory of the Lord" with its architectonic fugal interplay between the four sections and the foreshadowing of joy to come.
Is music notes or lines, individual tones or gestures? Hollerung opted for precision in the notes and sacrificed at times the sense of greater shaping. High notes and low notes were reached by voices and instruments alike, but often sacrificing the melodic direction, and the sense of the greater form.
Arriving at the pitch became less of an issue in the culminating chorus, the "Hallelujah", marked by a greater sense of arrival. The choral wall of sound took the audience to a place of joy. Points and lines all worked together in the familiar piece. Handel's brilliance of clear architecture with sizzling strings and clarion voices came together. There is good reason the chorus is a top-10 tune of the 1700s.
In the second half, Hollerung turn around on the podium, the soloists let their hair down a bit, literally, and the audience was cajoled into singing some of the many familiar hymns and carols. Alto Anna Koor gave us some beautiful singing in her "pop" operatic voice.
For those of us in the audience raised in Europe, or who spent years in Europe for education or marriage, the carols remind us just a bit of the solstice in other climes. The sun departs and weakens, nature falls dormant, and people come together with candles, hope, to raise their voices together, so at least the sun will return.
The evening was packaged perfectly: Hotel Mulia's sop buntut to start, and a big band version of the Hallelujah chorus as the evening's capper.
