Thursday, October 15, 2015

The point of view of angels

 

 
 
"There were two main delights for me in that final year of College: the discovery of art in the inspiring lectures given by Gordon Tovey, and the performance of the college choir, where all sang, even those without musical voices. We sang ‘The Lady of Shalott’, ‘At Flores in the Azores (the Ballad of Richard Grenville)’ and the ‘Hymn to Joy’ from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, under the tuition of George Wilkinson, known as Wilkie. I remember rehearsing and rehearsing, and finally singing, full of tears at the momentous occasion, surrounded by singing voices, all in a sensation of being in an upper storey of the mind and heart, knowing a joy that I never wanted to end, and even now when I remember that evening in the Dunedin Town Hall, the massed choir and the massed audience, and people who one never dreamed would be singing, and I too, singing ‘soft and sweet through ether ringing sounds and harmonies of joy’, I remember the happiness and recognise it as one of the rewards of alliance with any great work of art, as if ordinary people were suddenly called upon to see the point of view of angels."
 
~ Janet Frame (from An Angel at My Table)
 
 
Image: Dunedin Town Hall
Photograph: Graham Warman
Layout: Rua Haszard Morris
Overhead projection from Vogel Street Party
('Literature & Light')
Saturday 10 October 2015 (Dunedin City of Literature)

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