Rising – Tavener, Svyati

John Tavener – Svyati

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Sunrise, Wednesday May 20

The Sun continues to lengthen its stays with us. 
We have thirteen more minutes together than a week ago. 
One month till the solstice.

Time and ritual. The music of John Tavener.

A prayer. Svyati. One sung at almost every Russian Orthodox service, poignantly at funerals: the choir sings as the coffin is closed and borne out of the church, followed by the mourners with lighted candles. 

Svyati is a conversation between choir and cello.

John instructs: 
Since the cello represents the Ikon of Christ, it must be played without any sentiment of a Western character, but should derive from the chanting of the Eastern Orthodox Church.

If sentiment means a feeling, a view, we suppose we fail at this...intentionally. 
The music seems to lead us elsewhere.
And, the composer also asks for it to be played with great expression and always rubato.

Sometimes we just do what feels right.

Tommy Mesa and his cello do what feels right in this performance of Svyati.
They do that in decisions on vibrato: where it enters, where it is absent. What vibrato can mean.
They do that in decisions about presence: when to drop back – to ‘sit at the back of the room’; when to let the cello sing, moving forward, acknowledging the stage as sanctuary, dais, concert hall, oracle. 
They do that in listening.

We love to sing Svyati because: Silence. Time and Space. Verticalization. 
But John balances the attenuation of Orthodox-inspired music with motion, and one of the things that is so lovely about singing it is to listen for the canons between our voice parts in the full-choir sections, as we reach across the room with our ears and connect to other voices, following one another with the same melodies, or singing in contrary motion, or communing with the perpetual drone in the bass.
The drone is faithful to us. 
To the piece. 

immortal
strong
mercy

Words rattling around in our own silences every day. 
Though we are reluctant to admit that. 

Mercy.

- The Whole Team @ The Crossing

Svyati

music by John Tavener

words from the Russian Orthodox Trisagion

recorded live in concert April 11, 2015 at Longwood Gardens

audio by Paul Vazquez of Digital Mission Audio Services

with Thomas Mesa, cello

video art by Beth Haidle

* * *

святый боже,
святый крнъпкiй,
святый безсмертный, помилуй насъ.

Holy God,
Holy and Strong,
Holy and Immortal, have mercy upon us.