Rising – Weir, Vertue
Judith Weir – Vertue
Sunrise, Thursday April 23
Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky;
The dew shall weep thy fall to-night,
For thou must die.
Morning!
Oh, those metaphysical poets with their God and nature and metaphor! Who writes a poem in which the evening dew weeps over the loss of the day, a rose tells its admirer to wipe away their tears, and Spring is compared to a poem as a something ephemeral, destined to end?
George Herbert. Master of mystical musing and harbinger of Heaven.
Roses go back to their roots,
Spring gives way to Summer,
Poems cease like Seasons.
Souls (those with Vertue) live.
Judith Weir’s Vertue develops Herbert’s observations with subtle elegance. The poem literally unfolds like a flower…or a Season. The “new day” of the first verse is heard in just two treble parts; “the rose” of Verse 2 adds the tenors who rise as the rose shines its raging red and fall as it fades. The full choir joins in Verse 3 at the evocation of Spring and Music. But, we have not yet arrived. Only with the introduction of the Soul do we hear a texture that employs the full range of the choir; the fourth verse begins as a kind of audible Coming Together – a completion – something you didn't know you knew, until it was standing before you as a Truth.
Only a sweet and virtuous soul,
Like season'd timber, never gives;
But though the whole world turn to coal,
Then chiefly lives.
We love to sing Vertue because it reminds us that restrained beauty has purpose; that renewal happens; that the value of Community Music Making lies in equal parts acting and reacting, giving and receiving. Verse 4 is like a homecoming – the simplest, hymn-like writing, allowing us to inflect the text as One, with meaning and purpose, leading to the only line of the poem Judith repeats – the last. It’s a kind of suspended ending; it hovers and folds in on itself...like the Soul in which Herbert has so much trust.
Sun’s up.
Sweet day.
Be well.
- The Whole Team @ The Crossing
Vertue
music by Judith Weir
words by George Herbert
recorded live in concert at The Crossing @ Christmas
December 16, 2018 at The Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill
audio by Paul Vazquez of Digital Mission Audio Services
video art by Beth Haidle
* * *
Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky;
The dew shall weep thy fall to-night,
For thou must die.
Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye;
Thy root is ever in its grave,
And thou must die.
Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,
A box where sweets compacted lie;
My music shows ye have your closes,
And all must die.
Only a sweet and virtuous soul,
Like season'd timber, never gives;
But though the whole world turn to coal,
Then chiefly lives.