a musical ministry
Story By Mike Overall, Photo by Jodi Hutchison

When Kelly Craft raises his baton to conduct Johannes Brahms’ immortal “Ein deutsches Requiem – A German Requiem” on Sept. 12 at 3 at the ASU Fowler Center’s Riceland Hall, the first words of the composition will set the tone for what lies ahead: “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

The seven-movement Requiem, which many say is the 19th century composer’s magnum opus, will be performed exactly nine years and one day after the 9/11 attacks that unleashed a worldwide conflagration and violent precedent at the dawn of the 21st century.

However, the Brahms masterpiece is not a prayer for the dead, said Craft, a Jonesboro native. The composer’s text, which Craft has painstakingly transliterated into English, “is a human requiem that comes from Martin Luther’s Bible.... Brahms wrote his brilliant piece for the living.” Within the text are the words “Darkness to Light” and “Sadness to Joy.”

The conductor hopes the concert will engender a ministry “to take on the road,” one where CD recordings or live performances of Brahms’ musical message of hope, healing grace and inner peace for humankind may provide solace and comfort to the grief-stricken. Craft said the music may have a profound influence on victims of crime, those who have suffered a personal loss, or victims of tragedies, whether natural or man-made.

The Requiem will encompass the talents of 80-plus musicians, from Jonesboro and the Mid-South, and will feature a full chamber orchestra and chorale. “We have been rehearsing twice a week,” Craft, 58, said. He said working alongside some of the more talented musicians in the area is his good fortune and bodes well for the impending performance of a very difficult, challenging and lengthy composition.

Vocal soloists will include soprano Marika Kyreakos and baritone Matthew Carey, both of the ASU faculty. Craft’s daughter,Becca, is the understudy for the soprano role.

The traditional Roman Catholic liturgical text for the requiem mass is a prayer for the dead, Craft, himself an exceedingly talented musician, said in an interview. Brahms’ text, on the other hand, seeks to comfort the living who must deal with and accept death.

Just 33 when he completed the masterwork, Brahms already had a very personal perspective on mourning. The Requiem had begun to gestate in his mind a decade earlier, in response to the untimely death of his mentor, Robert Schumann. Then came the death of Brahms’ mother in 1865, which further impelled him to complete the seminal work.

Craft said “A German Requiem” is not simply a memorial to the composer’s mother or mentor, “but a message of hope to us all.” He said the composer took great pains putting together his text, piecing together fragments from throughout the Bible to create a vivid and moving tapestry of solace.

Craft, who was ordained for the Christian ministry in September 2009, said just as Brahms sought peace for and among his loved ones, “I’m trying to be obedient to God’s will in my life.”

The conductor has lived with, studied passionately and been profoundly affected by the most comforting, humane requiem ever written. Brahms’ masterpiece brought inner peace and hope to Craft when he was undergoing a personal ordeal in his life. He knows how devastating and debilitating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may be to its victims, and found security and peace in his own life through the healing power of God’s grace, prayer and Brahms’ transcendent composition.

Craft said he was “beside himself with grief” in the aftermath of the March 1998 massacre at Westside Middle School, where two heavily armed students ambushed and killed four students, a teacher and wounded several others.
One year later, Craft and his musicians presented, in a private session, “A Gift of Music” to the surviving students and staff of Westside. The gift was the English version of Brahms’ “A German Requiem,” which Craft hoped would provide some measure of solace and comfort to the victims’ families, other loved ones and the first responders who arrived on the campus in the wake of the massacre, among them EMTs, law enforcement officers and other emergency personnel.

A second performance was presented before a public audience.

As he wrote in a paper entitled A Gift of Music, “Our motive ... was to show solidarity with those who suffered and to create, in some small way by our musical efforts, a positive memory that would assist them in getting through the next day. Our focus was on the living, on the survivors of community violence. We designed our event around their needs first, and the community’s needs second.”

One victim who survived that hellish day “still remembers our gift of Brahms’ music,” Craft said. The woman said the music imbued her with a sense of security and peace during a time of profound personal stress engendered by violence so shattering that it seemed almost incomprehensible.

Subtitled “Finitude, Love and Hope,” the paper Craft wrote contains this statement: “This will provide the motivation, framework, and a model for the implementation of a therapeutic intervention for mass trauma from community violence by using a musical offering of the ... English translation of ‘A German Requiem’.”

If implemented, he continued, “this therapeutic tool could be one of the many ways we work together to offer a gift of healing grace to communities that have experienced mass trauma.”

The musician said the therapeutic goal is “to assist healing by facilitating grief work, restoring a sense of safety in community, encouragement to pursue forgiveness and to discern a path toward transformation of loss through the development of personal and communal survivor missions.”