A Passion for Music, and Music for a Passion
I’m taking this opportunity, in the midpoint of this year’s Lenten journey, both to reflect on a recent musical experience and to look forward in anticipation of an upcoming premiere.
First, on Sunday, February 25th, my wife Maria and I attended a truly wonderful performance by flutist Melanie Chirignan and cellist Laura Melnicoff at the Clover Pond Vineyard in Altamont, NY. We were invited to attend this GroupMuse event because my piece, Cumulus Reverie (2019) for flute and cello, was included on the program. (Melanie premiered the piece in 2019, along with cellist Will Hayes.) Melanie and Laura have performed the piece a few times, but this was the first performance of theirs that I have been able to attend.
I feel compelled to write about this performance, because both Maria and I found it to be an especially moving experience for many reasons. The duo’s performance of my own work was truly excellent – one of the best I’ve heard of any of my pieces – and I am deeply grateful to Melanie and Laura for what they brought to the piece. But it was only one example in a concert full of brilliant performances. Melanie and Laura combined their technical proficiency and depth of relationship and spirit within the music in ways that were truly inspiring. Their playing effortlessly overflowed with a joy in music-making that was contagious, whether they were playing together or performing solo repertoire.
The loveliness of the venue and audience was integral to the effect of this performance. Maria and I had never been to the Clover Pond Vineyard, but what an excellent place for a chamber performance! The atmosphere was informal but not distracting, with light fare and wine being served, whimsical kites hanging from the ceiling, and the vineyard’s grape vines in their mid-winter sleep visible in the full sun of that day through the large rear windows. Melanie and Laura performed in the center of the room, surrounded by their listeners at tables on all sides. The space was acoustically resonant and bright, allowing the natural joy of the performance to resound throughout, to the point that I seriously considered taking off my shoes to feel the resonance in the floor.
For lack of a better word, the audience felt like family. (Many were close friends or actual family to Melanie or Laura.) We felt this immediately as we walked into the room, and I believe this feeling of welcome, unity, and true interest in the music only helped make the performance more beautiful. After all, what is music for, if not to bring us together? Music can express many things – joy, sorrow, pain, contemplation, praise, etc. When it is done well, though, with clarity of purpose, we find unity and friendship in those universally human expressions. We are made family – listeners, performers, composers as a unified whole. God’s presence is felt in these moments, and this, ultimately, is what Maria and I experienced at this little chamber music performance in Altamont. It was a musical “mountaintop moment,” appropriately, on the Second Sunday of Lent, after having just heard the account of the Transfiguration that morning.
Just as such an experience of music can serve as a reminder of the joys of life, so, too, does music help us to process the difficult or painful moments of our lives. As a composer of both concert and liturgical music, it is a privilege to be present to people by creating music that speaks to people in a variety of such human situations. And so, from the “mountaintop moment” of the performance in February, I turn now toward a new composition for the annual commemoration of Christ’s Passion.
This year, for our evening Good Friday Liturgy at St. Peter’s on March 29th, I have composed a new setting of St. John’s Passion narrative. My journey into composing this piece began in late January, when our pastor, Fr. Thomas Chevalier, suggested that this year might be a good time to do something a little different in terms of our presentation of the Passion. I agreed, and began to search for a musical setting that would meet the moment: something a little less dramatic than what we have done in past years that nevertheless highlights the importance of the text and helps us to appreciate the meaning of Christ’s sacrificial love. I found several good settings, but none that I felt would quite fit our parish needs.
And then, my wife said, “Maybe you need to write this.”
That was, apparently, all I needed. Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say. Immediately, the musical ideas and general shape of the piece began to find me: a specific tone for the words of Christ that moves down and then up in pitch, another for the Crowd (sung by the choir) that moves up and then down with wider melodic registration, and another, more consistent tone for the Evangelist (narrator), that tells the story without getting in the way. The words of Pilate would be included in the narration, with the option of being sung by another singer. The Assembly would need a sung response, to appear at various points throughout, that would help them focus on God’s love as revealed through the Passion story.
And so, on Friday, March 29th, our parish will premiere my setting of The Passion According to St. John (2024). It is not flashy or highly dramatic, but I do believe it meets the moment. The music is meant to communicate and heighten the text of the Passion without overwhelming it. The text is not paraphrased, but set word-for-word from the New American Bible translation of Chapters 18 and 19 of John’s Gospel. The only newly composed text is in the Assembly refrain: “See what Jesus has done for us. See how he loves us. How much God loves us!” I also designed the piece to tonally compliment Good Friday Adoration Suite (2018) – my setting of the proper texts that accompany the Adoration of the Cross at the same liturgy – and requires the same musical forces (two cantors, choir, and simple keyboard accompaniment). Some of my choir members have told me that they find the new setting “haunting” and “beautiful,” which are both encouraging adjectives for a composer in mid-rehearsal-process!
Despite the very different tone of the Good Friday Liturgy in comparison with the chamber performance mentioned at the onset of this post, my hope is that those in attendance will find a similar sense of familial unity. We humans, created by a God who is Love, need one another in order to know God’s presence in moments of both joy and sorrow, in both the mountains and valleys of life. My love and passion for music grows out of my belief in what music can do to bring people together in these moments. My wife and I experienced this musical reality firsthand on February 25th. My hope and prayer is that those who worship with us at St. Peter’s in Saratoga on Good Friday will experience it, too.
Music, like a vineyard, should produce good fruit.
