Although many advertisers declined to peddle their products and services on 9/11 — whether out of respect or reluctance to be seen as crass — that day and the days leading up to it were filled with ceremonies, unrelenting repeats of the tragic tumble, reflections on its impact and somber remembrances of those lost and saved.

As the media — print, broadcast and the Internet — bombarded us with events taking place that day, another happening occurred throughout the world. Mozart’s Requiem was sung and played by 180 choirs in 26 countries and 20 time zones beginning at 8:46 am at the International Date Line (time zone 25) in Aukland, New Zealand. Cascading from zone to zone, the 24 hours of music ended in zone 1 in American Samoa.

Conceived by members of the Seattle Symphony Chorale, the project was based on symphony music director Gerald Schwarz’s philosophy of retaliating acts of war with art rather than arms.
The Seattle volunteers sent out e-mails in January and were flooded immediately with responses — from 19 choirs in Riga, Latvia, to school groups to church choirs.

Quite a reversal from Virgil’s Aeneid and his call for arms, the Seattle Rolling Requiem project reflects what New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said in the New York Times on September 11, “grieve today and then grasp tomorrow . . . We need,” he said, “to inaugurate an era where the attack on the World Trade Center is a thing of the past, rather than a preoccupation of the present.” When this happens, advertisers can get on with their work and be creative; people can get on with their shopping; the country can begin to calm down.
And like Aeneas, who went on to found Rome, so must we build a new city and a new life, then heed the epic call to sing — not of arms, but of art as a weapon with the potential to end acts of aggression and terrorism.