Commemorating the 200th Anniversary of Felix Mendelssohn and the Inauguration of the New President

The choir and orchestra perform at Assembly Hall

Peter F. Dorman, being a chorister himself, could not have been more pleased with the choice of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s Hymn of Praise, The Lobgesang Symphony-Cantata as a choral-symphonic tribute on the occasion of his inauguration as AUB’s fifteenth president. The pairing of the AUB Choir and Choral Society with the National Lebanese Orchestra proved dramatic on the Sunday night of Inauguration Weekend. After an exquisite orchestral sinfonia, stirring heraldic exclamations from the brass gave way to the entrance of the choir in “Alles, was Odem hat, lobe den Herrn!” [All that hath breath, praise the Lord!] The excitement continued to build as each of the three soloists filled the Assembly Hall with resonant expression— particularly soprano Cynthia Samaha.

This easily communicated tone of triumph and light evoked something of the pageantry of the academic procession. While the AUB Faculty Symposium debated the history and future of the University in West Hall, Director Paul Meers offered concert-goers a different kind of meditation on the constellation of intellectual and cultural changes effected by the historical creation of the printing press. The Hymn of Praise is in many ways the music of what Marshall McLuhan famously called Gutenberg’s Galaxy; Mendelssohn’s setting of text from Luther’s Bible reminds us of the typographic foundation of the Protestant Reformation. For those who attended the first performance in Leipzig in 1840, four hundred years after Gutenberg’s invention of movable type, that anniversary may have symbolized the historic end of the Dark Ages and the beginning of the Age of Reason (“Ist die Nacht bald hin?” [Will the night soon pass?] sings an anxious tenor).

Although the participatory feeling of the Lutheran chorale Nun danket alle Gott may have faded in terms of its current cultural relevance, Eric Holtan describes the use of this theological-philosophical emblem as a signature element in many of Mendelssohn’s major works. Here, the AUB Choir performed admirably in communicating popular feeling. President Dorman himself acknowledged the choir’s excellent German diction and the balance in volume achieved with the orchestra. Principal horn Michal Mahdal deserves special mention for matching the soprano duet in the fifth movement with flawless expression—as does Talal Fakih for his beautiful and subtle work on solo clarinet.

In all, Beirut is home to a fine community of musicians and this stands as one of their great achievements. For a standing-room only audience, the response was probably exactly what Mendelssohn would have hoped for: joyful applause.