Here is a selection from a boy's choir concert in St. Petersburg, Russia. The first minute or so is not important, as the boys are getting themselves organized and the crowd is unsettled. Then we hear a very young voice coming from somewhere. Perhaps, like an angel, he is making an announcement. The photographer seems startled at what he hears — his camera spins around almost to the ceiling and then to the rear door of the church where a small boy sings a repeated phrase.
Returning to the front of the church, a serious young man (both modern and traditional) shocks us with his voice. Why so serious? Perhaps he is just nervous at being featured. Many adults are terrified of speaking, reading or singing in public. I'm wondering he is so serious because he's singing about serious things. Maybe the lyrics peek into the incomprehensible enormity and vast depth of God's presence and love. That would shock us!
We have no translation of the song, but that needn't trouble us. We are left free to imagine. I'm thinking perhaps the little boy is singing:
Awake my heart!
Awake my heart!
Only by love will we know God!
Then the older boy:
God cannot be grasped by thought
but only by love!
Shelve your
calculations,
plans, hopes, fears,
imaginings —
even the pious ones,
your anxieties and dreams
your too-small ideas!
Break free of the brain-box;
distorting, distracting,
diminishing,
and come to God by love,
the nature of which is to grow!
P.S. Some have said this young man will one day be a great Russian opera baritone or bass. But why do we jump to that conclusion? Is it because he will make big money that way? It's not enough to sing profoundly and with skill to God's glory — we need the biggest applause and notoriety?
