July 2015 marks the 600 year anniversary of the martyrdom of Jan Hus. This week, writer Jim Nedelka offers exclusive reflections for the Outlook on the spiritual and cultural events of HusFest 2015 in Prague.
PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC – As curtain time drew near for the start of the opening concert of Husovské slavnosti 2015 (HusFest 2015) here in Old Town Square on the Czech capital, a large gray cloud also came to hear the music, looming above the crowd. As the Moravian Philharmonic/Olomouc, the choir of the Religious Music Seminar/Evangelical Academy, and the Akademical choir Žerotín took their places on the stage set up to the right of the Jan Hus Memorial statue, the cloud lingered, first contracting and then expanding.
But it didn’t rain.
It remained bottled up during opening remarks by Joel Ruml, synodial senior of the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren, and remarks by Tomáš Butta, the patriarch of the Czechoslovak Hussite Church. The two senior prelates helped guide this festival through a year’s planning, with the ECCB’s Gerhard Frey-Reininghaus serving as the ECCB’s event chair with Hana Tonzarová, his Hussite counterpart.
In fact, the rain cloud just hung around through the rest of the expressions of welcome made in Czech (with one in German with Czech translation) and through the international language of music: Dvořák’s “St. Ludmilla” and Smetana’s “Tábor.”
The rain threatened but held off during the world premiere of “Reformation Concertino,” composed by Ladislav Moravetz expressly for this commemoration festival.
It began to mist as this piece ended and sprinkles arrived as the chorus and orchestra were joined by the soprano, Maria Kobielska, and the baritone, Roman Janál, for Dvorak’s “Te deum laudamus.”
Then a little energy was pumped into the sprinkles which prompted umbrellas to begin popping open around the square.
That is, until Janál began singing, “in Gloria patris… .”
That is when the sun exploded through the gray cloud cover above the Church of St. Nicholas like a searing searchlight with mega-billion candle power. Some people who had had assumed seats abandoned druing the rain now fled for a place in the shade.
It was almost as if Hus himself, enjoying the music from some astral position, suddenly took offense at the irony that this choir and these soloists were singing lyrics in Latin to music written by a Czech composer during the opening of a festival honoring a Czech man executed in part for fighting for the use of the Czech language and against the forced use of Latin.
JIM NEDELKA is an award-winning journalist, writer and editor who actively searches for the “humanity” within every story. A ruling elder in the PC(USA), he is a member of Jan Hus Presbyterian Church & Neighborhood House in New York City. He and his wife, Holly, are the proud parents of two adult children.
