A grand performance of the national anthem in Madison... and a complaint about it.

Jessica Courtier in the Capitol Times, describing the program that opened the Madison Symphony Orchestra’s new season:

Forgoing the usual celebratory fanfare, the program opened with John Adams’ On the Transmigration of Souls, a piece premiered a year after the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

Drawing its texts from the missing-person posters that populated New York immediately after the terror attacks, the piece is filled with recorded speaking voices and live singing....

The piece closed as it opened, with recordings of the most quotidian of street sounds, and the audience held a space of contemplative silence, as conductor John DeMain had requested before starting.

I’m going to say something here that will no doubt get me hot water: I am disappointed that, at this point in the concert, DeMain chose to insert a rousing rendition of the national anthem.

Where the Adams composition creates a space for personal reflection and tenderly holds the names of people who perished, the anthem demands a particular feeling. Surely the sense of nation was implied in the Adams piece and need not have been followed by sounds so linked to politics.

Meade and I attended last night's performance, and if the audience objected to the national anthem, you could not tell. Playing the anthem has been a tradition and omitting it because of the 9/11 remembrance is, presumably, even in Madison, almost unthinkable. And the orchestra, augmented by the choir, produced real thrills, especially when they hit the high note — with descant — on "free."