Eric Whitacre | The Sacred Veil Los Angeles Master Chorale 1 1 The Sacred Veil 1 The Veil Opens 6.40 Eric Whitacre 2 In a Dark and Distant Year 2.19 Text by Charles Anthony Silvestri, 3 Home 4.48 Julia Lawrence Silvestri & Eric Whitacre 4 Magnetic Poetry 6.30 5 Whenever There is Birth 3.36 6 I’m Afraid 5.17 7 I Am Here 2.23 Los Angeles Master Chorale 8 Delicious Times 5.20 Grant Gershon Artistic Director 9 One Last Breath 1.40 Lisa Edwards Piano 10 Dear Friends 3.17 Jeffrey Zeigler Cello 11 You Rise, I Fall 10.00 Eric Whitacre Conductor 12 Child of Wonder 4.44 The Sacred Veil was commissioned and recorded by the Los Angeles Total timings (music) 56.40 Master Chorale, co-commissioned by Monash Academy of Performing Arts MLIVE and NTR ZaterdagMatinee for Netherlands Radio Choir. 13 Interview with Eric Whitacre and Charles Anthony Silvestri 22.55 www.signumrecords.com 2 3 Foreword Grant Gershon Los Angeles Master Chorale, Artistic Director As I write these words in early April engage in material that is this “close to of 2020, hospitals across large parts of the bone” emotionally, and I’m in awe of the world are in the midst of enormous everyone involved in this project. Just as tragedy and heartbreak. There are Eric and Tony wrote music and poetry of countless stories in the news of families uncompromising honesty, so too did the confronting loss and dealing with the singers of the LA Master Chorale, pianist fragility of life. Of course for so many of Lisa Edwards and cellist Jeffrey Zeigler us, the reality of losing cherished ones to bare their souls in these sessions. To all of the slow and sometimes lurching process them, and to everyone behind the scenes, of disease has been a part of our lives. I am profoundly grateful. I hope that their The veil that separates us from those empathy, humanity and artistry will reach we love is both sacred and inevitable. every listener and give comfort and clarity in times of distress. For the artists who gave voice to Eric and Tony’s (Charles Anthony Silvestri) creation on this recording, the experience of sharing The Sacred Veil has been cathartic and heart-wrenching. We as musicians are rarely called upon to 4 5 After a long while, ten years or so, I was as separated as I had felt. Our loved ones finally in a place where I could process what who have died stand so close to us. I had experienced, what Julie’s death had I brought this poem with me to Los meant to me, and what I had learned after Angeles to share at a family funeral, and Introduction all this time. My friends had encouraged I stayed in the home of my friend Eric me to write poetry about it, poetry that was Charles Anthony Silvestri Whitacre. I don’t know what possessed authentic, that came from a deep, personal me to leave a copy of the poem on Eric’s place. And so, with their support I began piano as I left for the cemetery, but I did What if our departed loved ones are not our guiding star. Julie was a gentle soul, but to experiment with writing about my grief, so. Perhaps I just wanted to share with my truly gone, but are closer than we think? with a tenacious and stubborn spirit, and gingerly touching that place in my heart, friend the little bit of catharsis I had found How can we mourn those we have lost she approached her diagnosis with grit and still tender after all this time, and exploring in it; perhaps I secretly wanted him to while still moving forward? We have determination to survive. She had always the deeper caverns of my emotions. consider setting it. Eric quickly found the all experienced the loss, in one way or wanted to be a mother; and now with the One of the earliest poems I wrote was music beneath the words, and the journey another, of someone or something we fulfilment of that dream all around her, she a reflection about birth, death, and eternity, toward this recording began. have loved deeply. How do we know faced the anguish of leaving her babies and which was the product of all the reflection, when it’s time to move forward? resolved to beat this disease. Throughout the entire process Eric was all the processing, all the spiritual struggle The Sacred Veil represents a journey more than a creative collaborator. He was But in spite of all her efforts and prayers, to find my way back to a solid place to toward the answers to these questions. my friend, my brother, my confidant, my cancer touched our family like it does to so stand in a universe with God in it. Many journeys, really. Working with confessor, my advocate, my voice when many, and took her away. Understandably I began to understand things differently, Eric to create The Sacred Veil has become I could not speak. I don’t think I could I was angry for a long time—at myself, for contemplating what Julie might be a significant part of my journey toward have explored those deepest places in not doing more to save her; at Julie for experiencing now, having crossed the veil healing and wholeness after great loss. my soul without his guidance and gentle leaving me to raise our kids without her; into eternity. It was comforting to realize encouragement. The music he created My wife, Julie (Julia Lawrence Silvestri), at God, for His cruel silence in the face of all that from her perspective, where time and cradles and embraces the text in the most died in May 2005 after a long battle with our prayers. I grieved, and mourned her loss, space have no meaning, she and I and our loving and respectful way. ovarian cancer, just a few days shy of her to be sure. But I had children to raise, and a children are already together, and have 36th birthday, leaving me and our two small demanding job. I couldn’t touch the deepest always been. That veil between here and The process took several years and children to navigate the world without her, places of my grief. At least not yet. And there is always very close, and we are not demanded that I read for the first time I certainly could not write poetry about it. 6 7 since her death Julie’s journals, her email creative journeys I have attempted. We blog, her medical records, and other all have pain. We all have experienced writing. I discovered (or, rediscovered) loss. We all long for catharsis and closure, what a deep and thoughtful writer she even as we grieve. What I have found was, how much she cared for me and is that through hard work and time the the kids, and how frightened her illness old wounds do close; but they leave made her, in spite of her powerful faith. scars behind. Those scars are powerful Reading these relics of her inner life was talismans, evidence that we loved—and the most challenging part of the process still love—those we have lost. Oh, but they for me, reopening all the old wounds and are not lost; their journey continues. The encouraging a new, deeper catharsis. I am Veil is thin. They stand so close, just there, very proud that her voice is included in just on the other side of eternity. this work. Encountering her voice again also reminded me what a deep honor it is to have loved, to have become so intimate with someone that theirs is the hand you hold when you experience the most intense and sacred moments of your life: birth and death, those moments when the two sides of eternity mingle. Those moments are all here in this work: love, life, loss, anguish and, eventually, acceptance, peace, and welcoming home. The Sacred Veil represents the deepest, most personal of all the lyric poetry I have written, and the most intense of all the 8 9 I think when you say the line the first entire movements would ‘cross’ the veil, time, “Whenever birth or death”, there often times up a third or down a third. is a sense of anticipation created in the And I knew that Julie’s theme would be based word-machine of the mind. What is the on three notes starting on middle C, up a On the Music next line? How will this idea unfold? third to E flat, then back down again to C. Eric Whitacre If the line is repeated again, the mind Thus, the very first sound we hear is the instantly recognizes it as a pattern. So, the solo piano playing Julie’s theme, middle C sense of anticipation shifts, and now there is He had been staying with me in Los (the veil) up a minor third, and a minor 1 The Veil Opens a more alert, more curious part of the mind Angeles for a few days, visiting, and had third down. We hear that little motive that looks for the pattern to be confirmed. Whenever there is birth or death, left early in the morning for his Aunt’s three times in a row; after that the cello The sacred veil between the worlds funeral. He left this poem sitting on my When spoken a third time, the pattern is gently enters on a middle C, marking the Grows thin and opens slightly up, piano, so first thing upon waking I saw it.