Rising – Bryars, At Peace
Gavin Bryars – “At Peace” from A Native Hill
Sunrise, Wednesday April 8
Rise up!
Our little detour to 1680 is over and we return to the heart of our repertoire: Gavin Bryars' magnum opus, A Native Hill - a concert length, unaccompanied work written for us and premiered in October 2019. It comes to a close with this timely movement, "At Peace." We love to sing it because we love Gavin and we love his investment in getting to know us musically, vocally, personally. You can hear that intimate knowledge in this movement, which opens by acknowledging the contribution of each of the 24 singers in a 24-voice dense, chromatic cluster of density. Gavin writes;
This dense covering reappears to a greater and lesser extent throughout the movement, with its evaporation allowing the sense of being at peace to emerge. And this combination of the apparently traditional and deceptive complex comes about through a close reading of, and a deep respect for, Wendell Berry's beautiful prose.
Rest. Contemplation. Our relationship to the natural world. And to ourselves.
Peace with our inevitable "long shudder into humus." Peace with living.
When I move to go, it is as though I rise up out of the world.
Be well today.
- The Whole Team @ The Crossing
A Native Hill
xii. At Peace
music by Gavin Byrars
words by Wendell Berry from his essay A Native Hill, 1968
recorded live in concert at the world premiere
October 13, 2019 at the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill
audio by Paul Vazquez of Digital Mission Audio Services
* * *
I have been walking in the woods, and have lain down on the ground to rest... And now a leaf, spiralling down in wild flight, lands on my shirt... At first I am bemused and mystified by the coincidence - that the leaf should have been so hung, weighted and shaped, so ready to fall, so nudged loose and slanted by the breeze, as to fall where I, by the same delicacy of circumstance, happen to be lying...
And suddenly I apprehend in it the dark proposal of the ground. Under the fallen leaf my breastbone burns with imminent decay. Other leaves fall. My body begins its long shudder into humus. I feel my substance escape me, carried into the mold by beetles and worms. Days, winds, seasons pass over me as I sink under the leaves. For a time only sight is left me, a passive awareness of the sky overhead, birds crossing, the mazed interreaching of the treetops, the leaves falling - and then that, too, sinks away. It is acceptable to me, and I am at peace.
When I move to go, it is as though I rise up out of the world.