The Sacred Veil
programme notes
The Sacred Veil
American composer and conductor Eric Whitacre (1970) needs little introduction. With his accessible musical style and pioneering projects, he has transformed the choral world. Ever since his debut album Light & Gold won a Grammy Award in 2012, he has collaborated with leading ensembles across the globe, from VOCES8 to The King’s Singers. He also shares a particularly close relationship with the Flemish Radio Choir. When he first came to Belgium in 2016, it was, in his own words, love at first sight. He has since returned almost every year to conduct the choir and has found a second home here.
During one of his previous visits, Whitacre presented the Belgian premiere of his largest and most deeply personal work to date: The Sacred Veil. The composition gives voice to the grief of his childhood friend and long-time poet Charles Anthony Silvestri (1965), who lost his wife in 2015. The Sacred Veil explores the fragile threshold between life and death, between profound sorrow and gratitude for all that has been. After those performances, Whitacre continued refining both the music and the text, and now returns to Belgium to present the complete work once again. The performance opens with a brand-new composition by Antwerp-based composer Noah Senden (1998).
A moment of shared truth
For the fourteenth edition of Musica Divina, the festival has appointed a composer-in-residence for the first time. The honour goes to Noah Senden, a young composer who graduated from the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp around five years ago, where he studied with Wim Henderickx. During an Erasmus exchange in Tallinn, he became captivated by Baltic choral music, the region’s striking natural landscapes and its rich spirituality. That fascination with stillness, simplicity and the expressive power of the human voice continues to shape his own music, which he describes as ‘poetic yet tangible, at times challenging in character, and always imaginative’.
For this new commission, Senden spent a week in retreat within the walls of Averbode Abbey. There, he composed his new work inspired by the festival theme ‘Moments of Truth’: ‘For me, truth in music often begins with something very small. A brief motif, a simple gesture, something that immediately feels familiar, yet also reveals an entirely new sound world or listening experience. Those small building blocks sustain the whole work while creating a sense of both recognition and surprise.’ During Musica Divina, Senden’s composition will be heard in a different guise at each performance: ‘I want to create a kind of musical core that always remains recognisable, but comes to life differently each time it is performed. The work breathes, as it were – evolving with the unique character of each space and the ensemble that performs it.’
The Sacred Veil
The fragility of life
The immediate inspiration for The Sacred Veil came from a poem Silvestri left on Whitacre’s piano one morning in 2017. In it, he described the almost imperceptible passage from eternity into life – and back again. It was his deeply personal response to the emotions and reflections that had accompanied him since the death of his wife, Julie. That very morning, Whitacre resolved to devote an entire work to his dear friend’s story, tracing his journey from meeting Julie for the first time to saying goodbye to her. At the same time, he sought to express a universal meditation on life and its transience. As Whitacre himself explained, the ambition behind The Sacred Veil was to tell ‘as honestly as possible what actually happens when someone goes through this’, not ‘in some grand, liturgical way, but in a very human, personal way’.
Gradually, Whitacre and Silvestri shaped the work’s overall structure, continually refining and reshaping each movement until all twelve felt exactly right. Alongside Silvestri’s own poetry, the score also incorporates verses by Whitacre and personal writings by Julie herself, capturing the couple’s love, her courageous struggle with illness and the inevitability of her death. Whitacre originally envisaged a chamber orchestra of ten players alongside the choir, but as the composition evolved he stripped away every unnecessary layer. The atmosphere needed to remain as intimate as possible, and in the piano and cello he found the perfect companions.
At around an hour in length, The Sacred Veil occupies a unique place within Whitacre’s output. Several movements received their premieres during 2017 and 2018, while the complete work was first performed in early 2019. The LA Times described it as ‘a celebration of the fragile beauty of life’. Yet perhaps the most poignant response came from PeoplesWorld: ‘The Sacred Veil is one of the most important musical contributions of our time to a non-religious, non-political understanding of death and loss. (...) Attending a performance or listening to a recording may prove a life-changing experience for anyone who has known grief firsthand.’ For Silvestri himself, the creative process was profoundly cathartic. He later expressed his gratitude to Whitacre ‘for taking this journey with me, for revisiting old scars, and for bringing me so much closer to healing.’
Text by Aurélie Walschaert