Memory and Memorial

The group selected Mozart’s final work, his Requiem Mass of 1791, and all agreed to invite faculty members as soloists. When Dean of the Conservatory Robert Fountain was suggested as conductor, a chorus of unanimous approval rang through the hall. 

“Fountain was at the pinnacle of the choral movement,” said J. Scott Ferguson ’79, a choral and voice professor at Illinois Wesleyan University, in a 1996 Oberlin Alumni Magazine article. “He lived and breathed music, and he constantly challenged us to listen and think.” 

During his 22 years at Oberlin, Fountain had established an exceptional reputation and the ability to profoundly move performers and audiences. He led Oberlin choirs on tours throughout the U.S. and Europe, as well as a tour of the Soviet Union in 1964. Following five years as conservatory dean, he left in 1971 for the University of Wisconsin, where he returned to teaching and conducting and established a graduate program in choral conducting. He retired in 1994.

On Wednesday, May 6, Fountain began rehearsals with the chorus, orchestra, and soloists for a performance of the Mozart piece that would be presented in town. What most participants didn’t know, however, was that behind the scenes, planning was underway for the Oberlin group to perform at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., just days later. The concert would follow the national anti-war protest at the National Mall scheduled for Saturday, May 9. A new energy and even greater commitment took over the rehearsals once the concert was announced.

“He was an unbelievable conductor,” Weinstock says, recalling lessons he learned from Fountain during that week, lessons he’s since used in his own teaching and performing.

Haass, documenting all of this on film, had a unique opportunity to witness Fountain’s own personal transformation. “What made this so powerful,” Haass says, “was that here was a man in his 60s who told me that he was apolitical and had never connected politics with music before. Something remarkably human became apparent, where the world of politics and music merged for him. Usually those ‘signature’ experiences happen to young people, yet here was a mature man and musician with a big ‘first’ experience.”

On Saturday May 9, 1,000 student protesters, musicians, and faculty members, almost all wearing black armbands, arrived in D.C. after a seven-hour trip from Oberlin. Most joined the peaceful afternoon protest on the mall, where 100,000 people gathered to hear brief speeches and calls to action from, among others, civil rights leader Coretta Scott King; members of the Chicago 7, including anti-war activist Rennie Davis ’62; poet Allen Ginsberg; protest organizer Ron Young; Kent State student Mike Allen; and celebrated pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock. The protest ended in the late afternoon.

By 7 p.m. the mostly solemn musicians had gathered at the cathedral for an open dress rehearsal. The next day, after a night sleeping on the rectory floors, they assembled again on the stage, looking out at the pews packed with attendees. Stephen Couch intoned a prayer to the audience. A white-arm-banded Fountain then led the ensemble as Mozart’s powerful music took over. 

“It was not in the ‘how’ of the performance, which was superb,” Paul Hume reported in the Washington Post. “It was in the ‘why,’ the emotion of the day, that the 250 singers and instrumentalists reached beyond Mozart’s notes to sound their deepest meaning.”  

As the last measures of “Lux Aeterna” faded out, the cathedral fell silent. Then church bells rang out and the musicians left the stage, sensing they were experiencing a once-in-a-lifetime moment.

Weinstock notes that presentations of the Mozart Requiem he would go on to hear over the decades would “seem flippant to me” by comparison. He recalled Fountain’s drawn-out tempo while conducting the piercing “Lacrimosa,” contrasting it with the faster tempos typical of contemporary performance practice. “Most conductors wouldn’t dare to do this music at such a slow tempo, as it would fall apart without the sense of line.”

Fountain’s mastery of the musical line and the inherent drama of this great music can be heard on the recording made of the performance, issued by Oberlin College later that year. The last few minutes of Haass’ film are devoted to dramatic footage of the final moments (“cum sanctis tuis in aeternum, quia pius es”) of the performance.

“One of the least publicized events in the remarkable weekend of protest rallies in Washington took place on Sunday afternoon when a group of young musicians from the Oberlin Conservatory...came to the National Cathedral with their scores and instruments and performed the Mozart Requiem,” wrote Alan Rich in New York Magazine the following week.

“[T]he cathedral was jammed, mostly with young people who were still hanging around after the rallies...many of them barefoot. After the speeches, the yelling, the chanting and the outbursts of violence, the incredibly poignant music resounding against a background of architectural majesty and utter silence seemed, somehow, the ultimate summation of the feelings that were swirling around that place in these times, and Mozart’s music of 179 years ago took on a relevance that was beyond any challenge.” 

Many years later, as a retiree living back in Oberlin, Robert Fountain received a letter from his friend Ellsworth Carlson, who had served as professor of Asian history, provost, and acting president of the college. “[W]e have just listened to the recording of the Mozart Requiem, performed by Oberlin students, conducted by one Robert Fountain, in the Washington Cathedral in 1970. The music was beautiful, inspiring, and altogether wonderful. The event was one of the great moments in Oberlin history.”