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.