by Steve Neel
Before he was Stephen Jay Gould – world-renowned paleontologist, science writer, and genius grant recipient – to his fellow singers he was just Steve Gould, long-time Cecilia bass. We knew that Steve was smart, funny, and a devoted Cecilia supporter. What became clear, as his fame grew, was that he would remain loyal to Cecilia and its musical mission to the end.
Steve’s devotion to Cecilia took many forms. When we needed a persuasive fundraising letter, Steve said, “I’m a professional writer – let me do it.” As Cecilia’s 1976 centenary approached, Steve wrote and published The Cecilia: The First 100 Years. Awarded one of the first MacArthur “genius grants” in 1981, he directed a portion of the grant to Cecilia, supporting our pioneering Jordan Hall performances of Handel’s oratorios with period instruments.
In 1991 The Boston Globe Magazine carried Steve’s “Ode to Cecilia,” with this subhead: “An evolutionary biologist and second bass makes a plea for the endangered species known as the choral society.”
“The Boston Cecilia,” Steve wrote, “honors the patron saint of music in its name, a good title in the current [financial] crisis, for the legendary Cecilia was not only an accomplished organist but proved especially hard to kill at her martyrdom (she was ultimately beheaded, after flames failed to hurt her.)”
His “Ode” continued: “My case for Cecilia is both personal and historical. . . Each individual must make his own definition of wholeness and personal integration. Singing, for me, ranks with family, friends, satisfying and useful work, even baseball, among the components of a full life.”
Steve’s devotion to Cecilia became personal for me in 2002. I had joined the chorus in 1974, and had sung with Steve as a fellow bass for years. In 1985 I decided to leave the chorus, convinced that my work schedule and young children at home would not allow me the time to keep singing.
Seventeen years later, soon after Steve’s death in spring of 2002, I received a call from Cecilia’s long-time music director, Don Teeters. Steve, of course, had continued singing with Cecilia and pursuing his phenomenal career, despite the cancer which he had survived well beyond expectations. Don told me that Steve, when death was imminent, had requested that Cecilia perform a memorial concert of works he had chosen, and that I and two other former members of Cecilia be invited to join the chorus for that concert. At this point, both Don and I were in tears.
That Steve had reached out to me in this way was not only indescribably moving, but a complete surprise: while Steve and I had been singing colleagues, and he had once graciously met with my young son to discuss dinosaurs, we were not close friends. Yet he knew something that I did not, or had forgotten: that I needed to be singing with my fellow Cecilians.
So, after singing at Steve’s memorial concert at Sanders Theatre in late summer of 2002, I rejoined Cecilia and regained that sense of “wholeness and personal integration” that choral music brings.
In this pandemic year of 2020, a passage from Steve’s 1991 “Ode to Cecilia” has special resonance. After appealing to the reader to “please come hear us,” Steve tells us why “this corner of Boston’s history, this island of current quality,” merits attention and support: “The product that we present belongs among the proudest and most enduring legacies of the human mind and heart.”
When Steve wrote that piece, the specter endangering Cecilia, and all arts organizations, was financial. Now, the threat from a pandemic feels even more existential. All the more reason, then, for us – singers and listeners – to heed Steve’s call to keep choral music in our lives, as I was fortunate to do eighteen years ago when he brought me back to Cecilia.
Steve Neel is a member of the Bass section of Cecilia.