The Sacred Veil

In his evening-length work The Sacred Veil, Eric Whitacre explores life’s great themes: love, faith, hope, and mortality. Set to an intensely personal text by his longtime friend and collaborator Charles Anthony Silvestri, this poignant work reflects on the beauty and fragility of our existence.

With a duration of nearly an hour, The Sacred Veil is Eric Whitacre's most extensive and, above all, most intense choral cycle. As with many of his compositions, Whitacre turned to his longtime friend and regular poet, Charles Anthony Silvestri, for the text. In a painfully intimate poem, Silvestri chronicled the death of his wife Julie: the long struggle she endured, the rollercoaster of emotions that accompanied it, and the inevitable moment of her passing. “This is the most intensely personal poetry I have ever written,” Silvestri remarked. In the final text, he interweaves his own poetry with fragments and quotes from Julie and Eric Whitacre.

And yet, the work manages to transcend the personal: the text, set to the heartbreaking music Whitacre composed for it, forms a universal reflection on life and its transience. The piece explores the boundary between life and death, between the untold sorrow of parting and gratitude for what once was. The long road to acceptance is captured in both the words and the music.