Great Day! at St. Olaf College

Last Sunday, Steve and I had the pleasure of attending the 111th annual St. Olaf College Choral Festival, just up the hill from our house. We were there primarily because Louisa was participating as a member of the Northfield High School Concert Choir. But I would have enjoyed it even if she hadn’t been among the impressive assembly of high school, community and college singers.

The assembled choirs at St. Olaf College’s Skoglund Auditorium.

Louisa’s choir, directed by Kyle Eastman, was one of three featured high school ensembles; the two others were from Owatonna and Worthington. The NHS choir performed three pieces: Ubi Caritas by Ola Gjelio, Ziegeunerleben by Robert Schumann, and Great Day! (which seemed like an appropriate title for the occasion), arr. Hall Johnson.

The program also featured three St. Olaf ensembles: the Viking Chorus, directed by Christopher Aspaas; the St. Olaf Cantorei, directed by James Bobb; and the St. Olaf Choir, directed by Anton Armstrong. Members of 35 high school, community and church choirs from across the state, plus the St. Olaf ensembles, also performed four pieces as a mass choir. The concert was so well attended, we had a difficult time finding a parking spot.

Armstrong explained at the beginning of the concert that the festival began as a celebration of music, visual and dramatic arts and was traditionally held in May. But in 1985, the choral day moved to the fall to accommodate an event held later that spring with guest conductor Robert Shaw. It has since remained a fall event.

“It’s a wonderful time to bring choirs from throughout the region to St. Olaf to share in a day of singing,” Armstrong told the audience.

Louisa and Steve, post-concert.

Armstrong spoke again before the closing number of the two and a half hour concert. In his brief thank you speech, he spoke so beautifully and eloquently about the importance of the arts in education, I went back and transcribed his words from the festival recording so I could repeat them here. He said:

“We cannot underscore enough what the arts do in the transformation of young people. We must have this. You see the acronym STEM [science, technology, engineering and math]; the enlightened schools have STEAM because they know art has to be part of that. We will not have a society that can go forth if they don’t know how to live and make beautiful things together.
 
“My colleagues and I have been saying that if we can get Congress to sing together in a choir, they might be able to govern the country. Because you have how many shades of varieties of thought and beliefs up here [indicating the festival mass choir members] but they sing together as one. 

“That’s what the arts have to give: they transform the mind, they transform the heart, they transform the very spirit and essence of who we are.”

My kids have had the great opportunity to sing at St. Olaf on several occasions, through their involvement in the Northfield Youth Choirs, so it could be easy for me to forget how fortunate we are to live in a town that celebrates and supports the arts. But I try hard not to take that for granted. Even when you live among people who appreciate the value of the arts in schools and the greater community, it’s important to keep putting the message out that arts are a critical part of education and should be available to everyone. We can’t become complacent about the arts. We must – sorry, but I can’t resist the pun here – keep preaching to the choir, as well as to those who aren’t even in the church.

I have thought back to that concert a few times during the past week. And then yesterday, as I was sifting through some newspaper articles I had copied during a recent trip to the Minnesota History Center, I found another quote about music and young people that seemed worth repeating. I found it in an April 2, 1932, St. Cloud Daily Times column that mentioned the St. Olaf choir and the importance of the arts. I had copied it because I found it while looking up some articles about G. Oliver and the St. Cloud Boys’ Band.

The paper’s editor, Alvah Eastman, wrote that the St. Olaf Choir, which had just performed in St. Cloud under the direction of F. Melius Christiansen, delighted the large audience and was an inspiration beyond its musical ability. He also wrote this:

“Music is of inspiring value to human happiness, and fortunate are the youth who have this power of expression developed, a great value in life to appreciate what is beautiful adding to their happiness in the years to come.”

Inspiration. Beauty. Happiness. There are plenty of intellectual reasons for supporting the arts in education, but sometimes you just have to feel it.

Was last Sunday a Great Day? Yes, yes it was.