Let’s start with the ‘what’ as in ‘what happened.’   Saturday night at Carthage,  I collaborated with Dr. Wael Farouk,  director of keyboard studies at Carthage and the most astonishing piano virtuoso I have ever been privileged to know, in a performance of Franz Schubert’s Die Winterreise, (‘Winter Journey’),  one of the towering masterworks in the history of music for the voice.  This is a cycle of 24 songs in which Schubert set texts by one of his favorite poets,  Wilhelm Müller, that explore all kinds of faces and facets of sorrow, loss, and bitterness.   As the first song begins,  the singer/protagonist has already suffered some sort of hurtful estrangement from the person they loved – and through the ensuing songs,  we accompany the man on a journey through grief, anger, bewilderment, resignation and every other response one can imagine.  It is one of the most formidable and intimidating challenges that a singer can undertake.  I remember two different occasions when I got to hear Dr. Richard Sjoerdsma, long-time head of voice at Carthage, perform this cycle (by memory!) with great mastery and nuance. And for the Journal of Singing, I have studied and reviewed four different recordings of Die Winterreise that only deepened my appreciation for – and fear of – this massive work.  Nevertheless, when Dr. Farouk invited me to collaborate with him on this masterpiece,  I could not bring myself to say no.   And over the course of the last few weeks,  the experience of working on this work with him has been joyous and deeply meaningful to me.

I arrived at Carthage late Saturday afternoon filled with excitement – but also a bit tapped out from what had already been a hectic day and which became even more so when I suffered a flat tire on my way to Carthage.   Thanks in part to that unexpected complication,  I ended up skipping both lunch and dinner – which I’m not sure I have ever done before in all of my life!   On top of that,  I purposefully drank very little over the afternoon for fear of that evening’s performance being interrupted by an unwanted yet necessary bathroom break.  I wanted the song cycle to unfold without any intermission or break of any kind.  I did not even want the intrusion of drinking water in view of the audience – so there was no water onstage with me.  Couple all of that with the rigor of singing 75 relentless minutes of music without pause – a work of wrenching intensity and emotionality – in a warm hall – and one has a perfect storm of risk factors,  the ideal recipe for disaster.  (Given all that, it’s a wonder that I didn’t keel over after the very first song!)

Despite all of that, I made it through 22 of the 24 songs fully intact – and satisfied that I had given fully of myself, both vocally and emotionally,  and taken the audience on a journey of discovery through these remarkable songs.   And with me every step of the way was my esteemed colleague, Wael Farouk.  To make music with such a brilliant, generous and sensitive artist is the stuff that dreams are made of,  and I could not have felt better about what we were doing together.  There were plenty of errors on my part; as I said in my introductory remarks,  this was my first time performing this work and I felt like “a mere stripling” before its towering challenges.  Nevertheless,  it was tremendously exciting and gratifying to have my first performance feel this good.

By the way,  the 22nd song of the cycle is titled “Mut,” which means ‘Courage,’  and I was still feeling good enough that I was able to toss of the high F towards the end of it, which is the highest note in the whole cycle.  But as I began singing the 23rd song, “Die Nebbensonnen,”   I began to feel woozy – and after just a measure or two, I stopped singing and leaned over to Wael to say that I needed to sit down- but would sing from there.

Once I was seated, I gestured for Wael began playing the song again,  and it was just a matter of five or six seconds before I fainted dead away and fell to the floor.   (The college’s AV video recording of the recital does not show me fainting- but one hears the sound of me falling.  That alone is pretty disturbing.)   I’m not sure how long it took for me to regain consciousness,  but when I did,  I found myself lying on the floor of the chapel with four or five concerned audience members tending to me.  Before too long,  an ambulance arrived and several EMT’s set to work ascertaining my condition and preparing me for transport to the nearest ER.  It was only as I shakily got to my feet- with their assistance, of course- that I realized that most of the audience was still there.  It was an amazing sight to me because I had no idea how long I had been unconscious – but it felt like it had been awhile. (In fact, it had been just a matter of seconds- and the time I was tended to was just a very few minutes.)  Nevertheless, I was dumbfounded to see pretty much everyone in the audience still there-  and as I got to my feet, they began to applaud me.  And as I sat myself down on the gurney, I knew that I had to finish out the night with something more than the sound of me hitting the floor.  I turned to the head EMT and asked if he would permit me to sing the last song of the cycle.  He was not excited by the idea- perhaps fearing that I intended to do it while standing up.  But I assured him that I would sing it while lying down on the gurney.  I must have looked both pitiful enough and determined enough that he acquiesced to my crazy request – and he and his colleagues stood back as I began to sing the 24th and final song of Die Winterreise – “Der Leiermann”, one of the most extraordinary songs ever written.

In this song, remarkable both for Müller’s text and Schubert’s music,  the singer encounters an old man standing in a park, playing a hurdy-gurdy.  Nobody is listening to him or paying the slightest attention to him – except the dogs that are nastily nipping at him.   The small plate beside him on which people could leave a coin or two sits completely empty.  It is a scene of crushing desolation- and yet the singer somehow finds a strange sort of comfort in the sight- and he wonders to himself if he should go with the old man so that he might accompany him in his ongoing song of sorrow.   The words are stark – and Schubert’s music is haunting in its spare texture and relentless repetition of the figure meant to represent the sound of that simple hurdy-gurdy.

In a remarkable surprise to me, singing this song under these strange circumstances felt great – and in some ways, my voice felt fresher than at any other point in the evening.  It also helped that this song is like a dear old friend to me.  I have hardly ever performed it myself,  but I have taught it to a number of my voice students over the years – and also talked about it back in the days when I taught Vocal Diction and Literature.   I know this piece and all that makes it great,  and it was nothing less than a tremendous thrill and pleasure to be able to sing it with my friend Wael Farouk – even under these odd, far-from-ideal circumstances.

It was only when I watched the video shot by my friend Joe Vignieri that I realized HOW I was able to sing this.   At one point in the video,  Joe shifts his camera away from me and Wael and pans over the members of the audience sitting close by and watching me sing with the most intense sort of interest and concern.   And among those audience members were several of my own voice students.  And I realized in that moment that I was the opposite of that pathetic hurdy-gurdy man portrayed in Schubert’s song – someone shivering in the cold, playing and playing but utterly ignored.  How blessed was I, in stark contrast,  to be singing for people who were lovingly listening with heart and soul – willing me to make it to the end with their concern and their love.  That is HOW I sang that last song.  And also WHY.   For Austin and Angie and Cory and everyone else who had come that night- and who remained to the very end.

By the way, I chuckle to think of the instructions I gave to Nathan and David, the two students who were operating the projected supertitles of the translations.  I told them that I hoped that when the last song was over, there might be a few seconds of hushed silence- which would be the supreme compliment- and if so, they should wait ten seconds before shifting to the final slide …. the title Die Winterreise, which would be the audience’s cue to applaud.   Well, given the rather melodramatic way in which it was sung, the audience did not respond with stunned silence but rather with cheers, as though a runner who had collapsed in exhaustion had someone managed to regain their footing and stagger across the finish line.  And in a sense, that’s exactly what happened.   One way or another, I had to finish the night.

The rest of the story is actually pretty unremarkable.  I spent just over three hours in the ER at Kenosha Hospital, receiving very fine care.  (Among those who ministered to me was a young man named Lloyd who actually recognized me because he had been a choir kid at Tremper High School where my sister-in-law Polly Amborn is choir director; I play piano for most of their concerts.  Lloyd is now a nursing student at Carthage,  and he was terrific.)  They ran a battery of tests – CT scan, EKG, full blood labs- and everything came back as normal except for low potassium.  Otherwise, nothing appeared to be seriously amiss – and I was especially relieved that the crack to my head had not resulted in a concussion. Kathy was with me the whole time-  attentive and concerned but in a way that wasn’t needlessly syrupy.  She knows just what to do to keep me calm and grounded in such situations- and she was quite the trooper.  I am so glad she was with me.  I was also really touched that Wael made his way to the hospital a little later in the evening to check on me and make sure that I was okay.  And he has been checking in with me ever since.  I have a feeling that he and I – already dear colleagues to one another – will be more than that from here on out … having experienced something quite extraordinary together.   And in that, I also count myself so much more fortunate than that lonely hurdy-gurdy man.   For I had the privilege and honor of performing this monumental masterwork … or at least most of it …. with a colleague and friend – and to do so for an attentive audience who seemed to appreciate my halting efforts to do justice to this incredible work.    How blessed am I?

P.S.-  I got a great night’s sleep – spent a very restful Sunday – and am feeling good, aside from the nasty abrasion on my head that I suffered in the fall.  I will take it easy this week- and will be making an appointment to check in with my primary physician.  But things look good.  And I have certainly learned a valuable lesson on how to spend the day before one performs something as formidable as Schubert’s Die Winterreise.