For over seven years I’ve been writing background posts for the Cherry Creek Chorale’s concert selections. It’s been a great experience all around, with the special privilege of learning about, and in some instances contacting, living composers. I was able, for instance, to contact John Rutter via his Facebook page with a question about the reasons for his many commissions from America, and he graciously responded. That was a thrill, to be sure.
This past Tuesday night provided another thrill when the lyricist for our newly-commissioned piece, “-RADIANCE-,” did a Skype call with us. Charles Anthony Silvestri has developed a career over the past 20 years as a provider of “bespoke” lyrics. (I love that word! It means “custom made.” The only other context in which I’d heard it was that of an English suit, one tailored to the individual’s measurements.) What a wonderful experience for me to sit with some dozen or so other Chorale members who were able to come early and listen to this man talk about his work and ask him questions. At one point our conductor mentioned that Silvestri seemed to be in his studio. Not his writing studio, you understand: his painting studio. Not only does he have a career as a lyricist and poet, not only is he a full-time professor of Medieval and Renaissance history at the University of Kansas, but he also paints in the styles of the same periods about which he teaches. (And makes his own paint!) If any living person deserved the title of “Renaissance Man,” well . . .
Of course our main questions for him centered around his collaboration with Santiago Veros for our own piece. It was very much of an ongoing process as he described it, with the two of them communicating back and forth. Veros had given Silvestri the title, so the word “radiance” was a must-have in the lyrics. For a composer the experience of writing music to fit the words of a text that is already written, especially by someone who has died, is a far different experience from the ongoing process that can occur with a living author.
On to our composer, the Argentinian Santiago Veros, who was present for the premier of his work on October. 11, 2019, and also for our second performance the next evening. How did this commission come about? Well, for all the hand-wringing about the harm that social media is doing to our society, it was Facebook that provided the connection between Veros and our conductor, Brian Patrick Leatherman. Veros asked if the Chorale ever commissioned pieces; Leatherman said yes, indeed we did, and we were interested in the possibility of doing something for our upcoming 40th anniversary year. And so it went. The Chorale worked diligently on Veros’ challenging piece, and I think he was pleased. Funny story: English is not Veros’ first language, and when he got up after hearing us sing the piece at our rehearsal earlier that week he said, “You did your best.” We were a little taken aback–were we that bad? But it turned out that he was thinking of his words as a compliment. So it’s become a standing joke for our Chorale any time we flub up in a rehearsal; our conductor will say, “You did your best.”
Veros has been a professional composer since 2013, at age 23. I find his artistic life to be fascinating, as he has followed a very different path from that of Silvestri, whose interests involve so many different fields. Veros has concentrated on composing, beginning his musical studies at age 7, majoring in composition at the University of La Plata starting at age 18, and then kicking off his career by writing for a children’s choir in Buenos Aires. Over the next few years he branched out into writing for choirs in over half a dozen other countries. In 2018 he became the first Latin American composer to write for the largest choral festival in the world, the Europa Cantat, that was held that year in Tallinn, Estonia. (I just went onto their website and see that they are a seriously big deal.) He now works on composing full time, but if our interactions with him are any indication, he knows the importance of getting his work out to the wider public. No shrinking violet or starving artist in a garret he!
I’d like to end this post with a look at the haunting words that Silvestri has written for Veros’ music. I’m not a musicologist and stay far away from any kind of analysis on that score (oh dear—so sorry!), but I do feel somewhat confident about literary stuff, Let me quote first from the composer’s commentary that he wrote for the sheet music:
This piece is about fully and truly committing to human relationships and being able to look back with joy on all the failures and achievements shared throughout time, certain that our joint efforts have made us stronger. Having someone with whom to build upon and share life makes us mutually stronger. RADIANCE is a piece that reminds us we must live each moment with intensity, feeling the blaze of the life force from all those that surround us.
With those ideas in mind I’d like to point out a couple of ideas/images from Silvestri’s text. You can see from the above paragraph that the focus is on human relationships in general, so it would be a mistake to see the wording as referring specifically to romance. The word “radiance” has several meanings that all center around the idea of light, so a light/dark dichotomy is woven into the imagery, but there’s also a thread of now vs. eternity. Here are two samples that I especially like:
We open our eyes together
In this moment,
And discover forever in each other.
And:
Together we have captured all the wind,
And the rains are now a flowing river,
Gleaming in the golden light
Of a blazing new sun of joy, of us!
Such a contrast that the rains (a metaphor for the storms or tempests that have been referenced earlier) are now a gleaming, golden river. The people in the relationship have “weathered every storm,” and now they can see the beautiful end result. But as I have often said in other posts that attempt some poetic analysis, you can’t boil down the meaning totally into some bald statement or there’s no point in having the poetry in the first place. I won’t quote any further from the lyrics here.
One last fun fact: “-RADIANCE-“ will be the fourth piece that the Chorale has sung using Silvestri’s lyrics. I discovered this as I looked at the list of the poet’s published choral works. We have sung “Across the Wide, Eternal Sky” with music by Ola Gjeilo, “Oread Farewell” with music by Dan Forrest, and Silvestri’s most famous collaboration, Eric Whitacre’s “Sleep.” So if you just can’t get enough Silvestri, be sure to follow the links to read about those other pieces.
Here’s the video of the concert in which this piece was premiered. The video is awful; the audio is great. “Radiance” starts at about minute 36, including the intro:
The air, it shines with new light In your eyes, in my eyes,
A new horizon opens wide before us;
This moment and eternity are one.
We open our eyes together In this moment,
And discover forever in each other.
Together we have weathered every storm;
The tempests that tormented us,
The shadows that darkened our hearts
Can darken us no more.
Together we have captured all the wind,
And the rains are now a flowing river,
Gleaming in the golden light
Of a blazing new sun of joy, of us!
We are that light That shines in the clear air,
The radiance of all eyes;
We are the one and eternal unity,
And our union is the soul of all things,
The universe, reflected in our eyes.
© Anthony Silvestri
© Debi Simons
