Rising – Vasks, The Fruit of Silence
Pēteris Vasks – The Fruit of Silence
Sunrise, Friday March 27
Labrīt!
We love it when music tells us exactly what to do. It makes conducting so obvious. It feels as if each phrase were designed for just our lungs. It feels like this dance was learned before we could walk.
Pēteris Vasks' The Fruit of Silence is one of those pieces. It takes a very simple text, an anaphora of five lines (from that controversial figure Mother Teresa), and imagines in real time the sound world in which those lines might be born, even to the point the words may not be necessary; indeed the composer describes this work as "a very silent meditation." The music seems to nod to Arvo Pärt with its arpeggios in the piano and its horizontal lines in contrast, but the result is all harmony; sure, these are musical gestures we all recognize and that demand our memory activate, but isn't that the point? At least here?
This is another one of those in-concert recordings that we just love because it's just so 'live.' It's not perfect. It's more truthful than that. John's playing in the long introduction is truly beautiful, but four bars into the choir's singing it's completely different; he's so generous, laying into the sound where it fills in the gaps, pulling back when not; his gifts of support become magic here. That first choral entrance? It was the first sound of our entire Month of Moderns 2018; and, it's a wreck of intonation. Yet, after the first phrase, we take our second breath and start the next and everything about our listening is different; the sound becomes more and more synthesized, focused, personal, raw, and aware – and it builds from there. We would never hear this in a studio recording – the process by which the community "listens itself" into a whole that is stronger than the sum of its individuals.
For us, this piece is a long, slow dance, that reaches upward and outward. It's one you dance yourself, like so many of us are doing all day, every day right now. It's intimate and public, and, by the time John plays those last two chords, we are changed - prostrate, imagining tomorrow.
Stand up. Dance. The sun's up and its service is peace.
- The Whole Team @ The Crossing
We'll be back Monday.
The Fruit of Silence
music by Pēteris Vasks
text based on words of Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu: Mother Teresa
recorded in concert at The Month of Moderns
June 9, 2018 at the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill
audio by Paul Vazquez of Digital Mission Audio Services
video art by Steven Bradshaw
* * *
The fruit of silence is prayer.
The fruit of prayer is faith.
The fruit of faith is love.
The fruit of love is service.
The fruit of service is peace.