Friday night, I attended both the U.S. premiere of Sir John Tavener’s Mass For the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary (2007) at St. Thomas Church, and a collaboration between Nico Muhly and the Icelandic artist Shoplifter (a.k.a. Hrafnhildur Arnardottir) at The Kitchen. The two events couldn’t have been more different, though there was an irrefutable thread that bound them together.
For most of his career, John Tavener was known as a devout practitioner of Orthodox Christianity, a tradition reflected in his many sacred works for chorus and orchestra, written mostly in Greek and Russian. Then, in 2001, he experienced what he calls a "vision," in which he encountered the universalist philosophy of the Swiss metaphysician Fritjhof Schuon. It proved to be an artistic, as well as a spiritual revelation.
“I reached a point where everything I wrote was terribly austere and hidebound by the tonal system of the Orthodox Church,” Tavener said, “and I felt the need, in my music at least, to become more universalist: to take in other colors, other languages.”
When Tavener was commissioned to write a universalist Mass last year, he said it was "a gift from heaven. The music seemed to explode onto the page." He incorporates Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, and Sufi texts, as well as the tribal music of the American Indians. Most remarkable of all was his decision to set not just the Ordinary and Proper to music, but also the scripture and Gospel readings, as well as all of the celebrant’s text – to my knowledge, a historical first in 1,000 years of Mass settings.
Tavener employs huge forces in the Mass, including orchestra, men and boys’ chorus, organ and soloists. It is dedicated to Pope Benedict XVI, in response to his call for a creative approach to music and liturgy, as well as to the memory of the Sufi mystic Sheikh Abu Bakr.
In remarks before the concert, the rector of St. Thomas, Andrew Mead, informed us that Tavener had intended to be present at this performance but suffered a heart attack while preparing for the Mass’ world premiere in Zurich last December. He is confined to intensive care in a London hospital, but did manage to send a written message that encouraged us to listen with our hearts and minds open.
The Mass lasted a full two hours, without intermission. Most of it was sung in Latin, with occasional forays into Sanskrit, Arabic, Aramaic, American Indian, Greek, German and Italian. The music was diatonic, but with occasional bursts of dissonance that reminded me of Messiaen. A huge pow-wow drum chimed in during the most elemental parts of the liturgy.
There were some extraordinary moments. The Credo and Gloria were accompanied by huge blasts from the organ and brass, with the choir singing at full tilt.The Magnificat – the great prayer of the Virgin Mary – was accompanied by uneasy glissandos that recalled those of Jonny Grenwood’s Popcorn Superhet Receiver. The Meditation was soft and sweet, even a little sad.
The heart of the work is the Celebration of the Eternal Feminine, in which Mary is praised as a "primordial and universal woman" while a bass and members of the choir alternately recite a litany of Hindu Goddesses. Deliberately, Tavener places this right before the Credo, which establishes the One and Only True God.
The Orchestra of St. Luke’s and the St. Thomas Choir of Men and Boys were all conducted by Director of Music John Scott. The role of the Celebrant was sung from the pulpit by tenor Mark Bleeke, dressed in white priestly garments. Soprano Patricia Rozario, a frequent collaborator of Tavener’s, sung the role of the Eternal Feminine from a gallery in the rear of the nave, along with a quartet of strings.
As soon as the final ovation ended, I dashed into the subway, arriving at the Kitchen just as the second performance of my evening was under way. I mentioned earlier that there was something connecting these two seemingly unrelated events: namely, composer Nico Muhly, who once sang in a Providence, RI boys choir and has been attending services at St. Thomas since arriving in New York seven years ago.
He spoke about his motivation in Rebecca Mead’s New Yorker profile last month:
“It wasn’t even a question for a second that I wanted to live a life that includes liturgical music as a major part…I feel an enormous attraction to the liturgy, to the tradition. On a certain level, going through rituals and living a year with an awareness of a liturgical calendar, as I have at St. Thomas, is really, really amazing. For me, it is culturally bizarre that it should happen to be High Anglicanism. But that is where the music is.”
You can imagine my shock, then, when I entered the Kitchen’s performance space and was confronted by a macabre set design of skulls and bones, hung in red and white rope like cobwebs, and laid out in patterns across the stage. To the right, a life-sized white horse was covered in braided hair. Three girls with dangling hair lay like corpses on a raised platform. Everyone wore death-like makeup. I sat in the second row with my mouth open: I’d gone from soaring transcendence to surreal nightmare in less than forty city blocks.
A quick scan of the program revealed that all this was the work of Shoplifter, who is probably best known for her work with Bjork’s set and album designs. There was no explanation as to what it all meant, but if she meant to disturb, she accomplished her goal.
Nico sat behind a grand piano on the left, wearing a triangle of braided hair on his chest that brought to mind visions of a young Mozart: laughing and playing with animated gestures, tossing off complicated figures as if they were nothing. His music is mostly bright and accessible, with minimalism as its launch-off point.
For most of the program, Nico put others in the spotlight. Sam Solomon mastered a difficult percussion work called, "It’s About Time." Violist Nadia Sirota played two delicate and challenging Etudes in which the theme bounced from her to Nico and then back again.
There were also more eccentric moments. About halfway through the performance, Nico left his bench and went over to the three girls with the dangling hair. With Nadia’s viola sounding like a bedsheet being ripped for rags, he proceeded to run his fingers through their hair, which hung in increasing lengths from left to right. A few laughs burst out from the audience, but Nico looked deadly serious throughout. After a few minutes, he sat back at the piano, took what looked like a horse brush and ran it through the mic’d hair of keyboardist Thomas Bartlett. (He calls the piece: Hair Passacaglia for Human Hair Harp and Ensemble.)
The performance ended with Sam Amidon singing and playing banjo on The Only Tune: a
gothic ballad about a girl whose body is butchered and turned into a
fiddle. He sang in a processed voice that came out sounding otherworldly, performing the last verses while astride the fiberglass horse, head cocked in a subtly sad gesture. (The Only Tune is featured on Nico’s new album of vocal works, Mothertongue, scheduled to be released in May.)
Part of me thinks that as great as his own music is, if Nico had his way, he’d still be a choirster. It’s as if everything he does now is chasing after that youthful, angelic sound which he knows can never be surpassed, only
approximated. In a sense, he’s no different than Haydn or Schubert,
both of whom sang in the Vienna Boys Choir until their voices changed. Fortunately for us, they all figured out how to Rearrange:
Nico heads to Holland this week, where he’s performing a series of shows with the Danish/English band Teitur; his next NYC appearance will be on May 8 in WNYC’s New Sounds Live series at Merkin Hall. But, if you want to hear Nico in full liturgical mode, head to St. Thomas Church on May 13, when his Bright Mass with Canons (2005) will be performed by the Choir of Men and Boys. You bet I’ll be there.