In a few weeks, Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum
of Art will be constructing its enormous Neapolitan praesepio. This
humongous nativity scene stretches about thirty feet sideways and
fifteen upwards. It is a little hunk of an Italian village with the
most intricate and charming figures about their daily lives.
Somewhere in this tableau is Jesus, Mary, and Joseph with a few shepherds,
as well as a retinue of exotic magi—but as part of the daily
life of the village. One must actively search the terrain where the
Holy Family has landed. It is a game for kids as they try to find
the threesome.
The scene also provides a catechetical tool—the tool would be
a variation on the question of Jesus, “Who do they say that
I am?” This Christmas version is “Where do you seek Jesus?”
Separated from the Christmas scene, the question looms when established
holy folk claim they have found Jesus in their usual places—church,
Scripture, personal salvation, meditation.
The Christmas story reminds us that the birth was in a stable amidst
chilling drafts and animal dung—no primary-care physicians.
The infant was visited by smelly shepherds, not doting grandparents.
To make the contrast even stronger: the mother had to get married.
Horrors. And the infant continued his life associating with all the
wrong people. The praesepio provides a good tool for our own questions
of finding Jesus.
It’s easy to say just look around you, but don’t limit
the search to your own backyard.
Let me extend the metaphor.
Now that Halloween is over and Thanksgiving is on the way, most of
us are directing our energy and time in completing the plans for the
music program for Advent and Christmas. Probably some of us are still
in pursuit of the perfect anthem or motet for the Christmas festival—something
that the choir and/or ensemble can sink their teeth in and do an impressive
job.
The composition should also capture and hold the attention of the
holiday worshipers. The great music for a great feast must transform
them . . . and if it’s in C major with a sonorous descant and
a part for a C instrument, then all the better.
A good place not to look is in fixed repertory such as oratorios,
symphonic poems, and repertory that would take us on a trip to visit
“Christmas around the world.”
Those are wrong places. It doesn’t mean that you won’t
find great repertory there, but you’ve already visited those
sites.
Of course, “Silent Night” still works as well as “Tu
scendi dalle stelle,” to say nothing of the “Christmas
Oratorio.” How about scaling down the search and investigate
fresh texts, which sing of the crèche and cross?
How about looking at the texts of Herman Stuempfle, Delores Duffner,
and Mary Louise Bringle? How about some of the chant repertory, “Hodie,
Christus natus est,” “Dominus dixit ad me”?
How about a Christmas without two brass quartets and three timpani
and just one brass quartet or trio and two timpani, if at all.
How about looking for Jesus in places other than the established “holy
spots”?
How about the village and the city and the barrio and the shelter
as well as the midnight Mass crowd and the once-a-year visitors to
the crèche and the lady looking for three pennies in her change
purse with five people behind her in the check-out line at the grocery
store?
The praesepio gives us some clues. It’s up to us to translate
them from their Italian ambiance and place them in our own villages.
