KYRIE
for vocal quintet (soprano,
countertenor, tenor, baritone, bass) 2 SATB choruses, organ, 2 double basses
and two percussion. Commissioned by the Bach Elgar Choir with grants from
the Ontario Arts Council and the Laidlaw Foundation. Text in Greek ("Kyrie
Eleison"). 60 minutes. 1997. Score and parts available through
PROMETHEAN EDITIONS.
.
Commissioned by Wayne Strongman and the Bach Elgar Choir of Hamilton,
Canada, Kyrie is a musical triptych set to the Greek words 'Kyrie
Eleison/Christe Eleison' of the Roman Catholic Mass. Each of the three
sections of the work is roughly twenty minutes long and is set to either
'Kyrie' (I), 'Christe' (II) or both (III). The ensemble consists
of a vocal quintet (soprano, countertenor, tenor, baritone, bass) flanked
by two identical ensembles of SATB choir, double bass and percussion. In
addition, there is an organ and a small number of amateur players playing
wind pipes at the balcony (the work is intended for performance in a large
ambient church.) Kyrie is a ritual more than a concert piece. Several
factors have influenced its composition: my ten-year tenure as a 'drone
keeper' in my parish church in Greece during my childhood and adolescence
with occasional night long rituals full of chanting, whispering incantations
and the synesthetic complements of ritual movement, gesture and incense
inside flickering candlelit interiors with frescos of Byzantine icons covering
every available surface of the church walls and domes. These impressions
gradually crystallized into the Medieval sounding aspect of the work. Although
not actual quotations, these parts of Kyrie are my personal reminiscence
of my days at the psaltery, and of my Greek Orthodox upbringing. My present
non-denominational approach to Christianity and to my personal relationship
with the numinous also found expression in Kyrie, in the parts which,
in spite the abuse of the term in recent years, I call New Age Music (this
aspect of the music is evident more in the latter part of the second section
and throughout most of the third.) There is a seemingly haphazard relation-ship
between these two predominant influences in the work and the numerous other
secondary influences too. The music seems to switch abruptly from one type
of material to another with no warning and without adhering to any pattern
of critical/analytical discourse which we have been accustomed to associating
with western art music. Nor have I consciously tried to adhere to any such
form or pattern: in composing Kyrie, I have followed my instinct
as my only guide, unconcerned about musical considerations of structure,
continuity etc. Since the completion of the work, I have incrementally
discovered a great deal of structure in my use of the material, as well
as addition-al extra musical connections, particularly in the area of numerical
symbolism: several number related items in Kyrie (time signatures,
tempi, number of repetitions, etc.) 'mean' something beyond their purely
musical function. As I already said, I was not conscious of most of these
connections until after the composition was completed. An exception is
the end of the third section which consists of 45 repetitions of 'Kyrie
Eleison', one for every year of my life starting with my birth and
ending with the date of the work's premiere. The method of extending musical
ideas is non developmental. Repetition is a key element in Kyrie.
That, in association with the laconic text has the effect of a mantra,
wherein the text is stripped of its obvious semantic and linguistic characteristics
and allows a deeper, more profound meaning to manifest in addition to performing
a purely 'tuning' effect for the soul. With a sympathetic rendering, the
piece should have a 'mind altering' effect on the listener, not unlike
that associated with some of the late works of Morton Feldman, although
in this case the approach is considerably more 'user friendly'. Kyrie
is for me the summation of a path, upon which I have embarked in the mid
nineties with the composition of Heirmos, my
first choral work. Like in Heirmos, I am exploring
ambient sound and its ability to have a integrating, focusing effect on
the energies of the performer and the listener. An ambient environment
is a responsive environment; it acts much like a biofeedback system. It
diffuses the unidirectional information path of an ordinary performance:
the sound engulfs the audience, the audience becomes one with the sound.
The abrupt pauses in the music are designed to allow the listener to follow
the sound beyond its source, as it moves about the church and articulates
the architectural details of the ambient space. The suggestive environment
of the church and the religious text also help to raise the listener into
a heightened state of acute listening, a state many claim is the gateway
to spiritual awareness. While I may be far from such a state myself, my
growing awareness of a fundamental 'post Renaissance' paradigm shift in
contemporary art and thought and my own millennial predisposition due in
no small degree to my upbringing in the mystical milieu of Eastern Christianity
have stirred me in the direction of Kyrie. According to the ideas
which I have found myself attracted to over the years, ours is an era of
'expectancy', a neo-Essenic era if you like, pregnant with the portents
of a great arrival. Whether this 'arrival' is of a historical nature or
one of personal contact is less important than the awareness and awakening
which accompany it. It appears that the world of infinite possibility postulated
since the Renaissance by the predominant scientific paradigm is fast collapsing
into two distinct alternatives, a process of enantiodromia, as Carl
Jung calls it. The art which has risen into prominence during the transitional
era of the past thirty years is precisely the kind of art which confirms
this enantiodromia and in turn draws psychological confirmation
from it, that is art which performs either a spiritually healing role,
or, conversely, a pornographic and/or violent one. In both cases, this
artistic activity addresses individual and collective desire and draws
legitimacy and purpose from its ability to do so. By (1) 'opening up' the
scope of the composition to over an hour of uninterrupted singing, (2)
slowing down the pacing of the music (and sympathetically the biorhythms
of the audience) and (3) eliminating from the music most elements which
might solicit a critical/analytical response, I have attempted to create
a spiritual environment within which the listener and the participants
might navigate their own course and draw their own nourishment: it is like
a long moment of repose, a clearing in the information jungle. For me Kyrie
is an arrival point: to a way of thinking about music which is divorced
from ego; to a music whose center is no longer the composer, but the listener;
to a sound which does not only describe the possibility of healing though
art, but more importantly participates in the actual healing process; to
an ambiance whose relationship to the sound source awakens within each
of us the awareness of the spiritual milieu which is all around us, but
which our daily preoccupation obscures and prevents from becoming a source
of sustenance.
Premiere performance: March
28 -29, 1998. The Bach Elgar Choir under the direction of Wayne Strongman;
Rosedale United Church, Toronto.
Reviews:
...A lyrical work of overwhelming beauty.
The Globe & Mail (Canada)
"A Kyrie for music’s new spiritual age... at the heart and soul of new
classical music"
The Toronto Star
(Canada)
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