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    by Christine Berwick
     May 7, 2002

After 19 years Paul Plew, chairman of The Master’s College Music Department, still remembers the first time he saw “The Crucifixion” and “Resurrection” paintings by Jan Styka. He was visiting Forest Lawn Memorial-Park in Glendale, Calif., and had stopped in at the Hall of Crucifixion-Resurrection for the hourly “drama” of the paintings. The larger painting, “The Crucifixion,” is 195 feet long by 45 feet high. In fact, according to the Forest Lawn Web site, “The Crucifixion” is “the largest framed mounted to canvas painting in the world.”

Every hour from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., the lights are dimmed, the curtains roll back, and the “drama” begins. While a recorded voice narrates the two-part story -- Christ’s death and His resurrection -- a spotlight illuminates, one by one, small areas of the painting. At the end of each section of the drama, the lights come back on, revealing the entire “Crucifixion” and then the entire “Resurrection.”

Plew sat in the main room of the hall, which resembles a small theater -- 800 tiered seats arranged like a crescent-moon facing a curtained stage. “I was sitting there next to one of my missionary friends from Italy,” he said. “I saw the paintings and they moved me incredibly.” Leaning over to his friend, Plew whispered, “I’m going to do a concert here.”

The next spring, Plew directed TMC’s first Forest Lawn concert, performing “The Seven Last Words of Christ” by Theodore DuBois. That was in 1984; Plew and TMC’s musicians have been back every year since.

The paintings helped Plew determine both the date and the music for the annual concert. “I was really moved because of the paintings,” Plew said, “[and] that’s why all of our concerts have to do with the death and resurrection of Christ.” He always includes a narrated viewing of “The Crucifixion” and “The Resurrection” as part of the concert. The concert is always performed during Passion Week, because, “I wanted to give something to the Lord that would be more of a sacrifice and an expression, from me, of my love and remembrance of the . . . sacrifice of my Lord,” Plew said. “To me, [Passion Week] is like eight Lord’s days in a row.” Passion Week is the eight days beginning with Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and ending with His resurrection on Easter morning.

For this year’s concert, TMC’s Music Department presented John Rutter’s “Requiem” on March 27 and 28. Plew said he chose Rutter’s “Requiem” partly because “I think it’s just one of the best Requiems written,” but also, because he wanted “a Requiem that helps us focus on the death of Christ.” While the concert always ends on a triumphant note -- celebrating Christ’s resurrection and future return -- Plew said that, “the main accentuation of what we do at Forest Lawn is . . . remembering His death.”

The concert began at 7:30 p.m. each night. The Collegiate Singers -- about 130 men and women -- filed into their places. (The Collegiate Singers is a non-auditioned choir composed of TMC students and local area singers, and which performs one major concert each semester.) The crowd fell silent as The Master’s Chorale, a select group of the Collegiate Singers, sang “Give Me Jesus,” by L. L. Fleming. Then the choir sat and the orchestra played a movement from Beethoven’s 7th Symphony. With the audience now completely enchanted, the Collegiate Singers and orchestra joined to present John Rutter’s “Requiem,” a seven-movement work sung in what Rutter described as a “counterpoint of Latin and English.” In the reverent hush that followed, the curtains pulled back and the drama of “The Crucifixion” and "The Resurrection” was presented in living color on canvas. After the paintings had been shown, the choir sang “He Was Wounded for Our Transgressions,” arranged by David Clydesdale. They ended the concert with “Peace I Give to You (John 14:25-28),” a song of benediction, composed especially for this concert by TMC graduate Steve Stück.

The best part of the performance, according to some concert-goers, was actually right after it ended. That’s when the Collegiate Singers took up positions along the sides of the narthex and sang “Peace I Give to You” again. As the melody reverberated off the arched ceiling, it seemed as though it might be the echoes of a heavenly choir. It was the perfect ending to a stunning performance.

Most of the audience members, Plew said, are the parents and relatives of performers, some of whom travel great distances to hear their loved ones perform. This year, “one of the students’ mothers came from New Hampshire,” Plew said. In addition to students’ families, Plew said that many people from the Los Angeles area attend the concert year after year. “We have a lot of people who come [simply] . . . because they enjoy the music,” Plew said. He got confirmation of that a few days after the performance, when a letter arrived from Walter and Daniel Disney, relatives of the late Walt Disney. According to the letter, the Disneys have been attending the Forest Lawn concerts for 11 years. They thanked Plew and all of the performers for a “very moving presentation of John Rutter’s ‘Requiem.’”