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Spirit Journey Programme Notes

Spirit Journey Programme Notes with Selected Texts and Translations

Notes by Stephen Wright

Since the dawn of man's existence spirituality and music have been closely interconnected.  From the animism of primitive man, through the Earth-based spiritual traditions of Native peoples, the flourishing of world religions, and our present-day pluralism, music has always been a powerful medium in reaching toward and expressing the incorporeal world beyond our own.  The choral 'spirit journey' you are about to take will examine some of the varied ways in which spirituality has been reflected through that oldest and most expressive of musical instruments, the human voice.

Paradoxically some of the most primitive sounds you will hear in this concert are also the most recent.  In its ever-expanding quest for originality and newness, the avant-garde movement of the last century moved beyond classical means of singing to embrace ‘extended vocal techniques,’ a catchall term which includes all manner of whispers, grunts, growls, shouts, overtone singing, and whistling.  Many of these techniques have a primeval quality to them which composers have found effective in portraying the ancient, the subconscious, and the otherworldly.

I. The Spirit of the Earth

The spiritual traditions of the North American First Nation peoples vary considerably across the continent, yet they still have much in common.  A central element for many is the belief "that the Earth is the Mother of all life, and that plants and animals have spirits that must be respected, honoured and cared for.  It is a holistic concept of not only human life but also the life of the world and all things in it, both animate and inanimate, wherein all things are related and interconnected through a circle of life.”  Our journey begins with three works which reflect the Spirit of Mother Earth, from the Pacific Northwest, the East Coast, and the Continental Interior.  The Haida Welcome Song, for the beginning of life, was composed by Agnes Russ (1859-1964) of the Taas Laanas Raven clan of Skidegate.  We are grateful to Terri-Lynn Williams-Davidson for bringing it to us.  The Micma’q Honour Song “is a chant dedicated to and in honour of the Creator.  The employment of nature sounds and the call of the human voice honours this tradition of the Micma’q peoples.”  Finally, Vancouver composer Rupert Lang has set a text from the Ute nation (from whence the name Utah) which is particularly poignant in this time of ecological awareness.  The last song in this set comes from Finland rather than North America.  It expresses the universal human sense of rootedness to a particular country, place, or location … the longing for home.

Earth Teach Me
music: Rupert Lang
text: Ute nation

II. Incantations and Chants to Invoke Spirits

R. Murray Schafer is one of Canada’s best-known composers, particularly in connection with acoustic ecology and the World Soundscape Project.  He has written the following about the Magic Songs, equally applicable to his later Chant to Bring Back the Light: “Magic Songs leads us back to the era of ‘tone-magic,’ when the purpose of singing was not merely to give pleasure but was intended to bring about a desired effect in the physical world.  In spirit culture everything has its own voice and the aim of the singer is to unify himself with this voice, ‘for anyone who knows and can imitate the specific sound of an object is also in possession of the energy with which that object is charged’ … The aim of these songs, with magic texts in a language spoken by no human, is to restore aspects of nature which have been destroyed or neglected by humanity.  To the extent that the performers and the audience believe in them, they will be successful.”

Incantatio maris aestuosi
(Incantation for a Stormy Sea)
music: Veljo Tormis
text: Kalevala, tr. Tuomo Pekkanen

The Kalevala is the Finnish national epic, a massive compilation of folk poetry assembled in the nineteenth century.  From its 22,795 verses Tormis has chosen several short passages which describe a sea voyage and the crew’s invocation to various gods to calm the wind and waves.  Ukko, the god of the sky, is the most significant god in Finnish mythology; Ahto and Vellamo are the respective rulers of the deeps and the sea.

Composition for Chorus 6: II
music: Michio Mamiya
text: Japanese traditional
translation by Chor Leoni member, Choji Hayashi

Japanese composer Michio Mamiya transports us back to a small rural village many years ago, where ritual petitions are offered to the god Gongen in an attempt to gain his good favour and avoid calamity.  Apart from the sung text, the accompanying musical instruments of the villagers are also imitated.  Gongen is a Shinto incarnation of the Buddha, Juzu are Buddhist prayer beads.

III. The Spirit of Wonder, Mystical Creatures, and Dreams

For much of its history the services of the Catholic Church were conducted in Latin, thereby making them unintelligible to many in the congregation.  Instead, the Church relied on the arts to convey the mystery and transcendence of the spiritual world: great cathedral edifices, stained glass, frescoes, sculpture, painting, and music.  From over a millennium of Catholic music we offer three examples: plainchant (albeit in a contemporary arrangement), a motet by Victoria, one of the greatest polyphonists of the Renaissance, and a recent work by an American composer.  Sublimely beautiful, together these three pieces draw us into the realm of the numinous.

Beata Viscera
music: Plainchant, arr. Joseph Jennings and Ken Cormier
text: Catholic Church

Duo Seraphim
music: Tómas de Victoria
text: based on Isaiah 6:1-3

Lux Aurumque
music: Eric Whitacre
text: Edward Esch

Igel und Agel
(from Vier Galgenlieder)
music: Erik Bergman
text: Christian Morgenstern
more translations and further notes here.

And now for something completely different … Stylistically the closest figure to the German poet Christian Morgenstern is Lewis Carroll, in that both base their works on the fantastic and nonsensical.  Morgenstern’s Galgenlieder (Gallows Songs) of 1905 present a new way of looking at the world, reflecting the perspective of one whose life is about to end.  Finnish composer Erik Bergman set a number of these Galgenlieder, including this tragicomic tale of a pair of amorous hedgehogs; Bergman emphasizes the absurd humour of the text by employing sprechstimme, a vocal technique lying midway between singing and speech.

The Banshee
music: Henry Cowell

Extended techniques are not just the domain of the voice; as part of the post World War Two avant-garde almost every instrument was cajoled into producing unusual and novel sounds.  A pioneer in this area was the American Henry Cowell (1897-1965), who in the 1920s began experimenting with non-traditional piano techniques.  One of his pieces portrays a Banshee, “a female spirit in Gaelic folklore whose appearance or wailing warns a family that one of them will soon die.”  (Warning: don’t try this with your piano at home!)

IV. The Spirit of the Beyond

The greatest mystery facing the human race is what happens to us when our mortal existence ceases.  In what form do we join the world beyond our sight?  How do we live on after our finite earthly time is over?  We can never definitively answer these questions in this life, but some do achieve immortality through their legacy of works.  Bach and Shakespeare are two such canonic figures who serve as inspiration for later artists - in this case two composers from northern climes, a Norwegian and a Canadian.

Immortal Bach
music: Knut Nystedt, after J.S. Bach
text: anonymous

Immortal Bach takes as its basis three phrases from Bach’s chorale Komm, süsser Tod (with a text which focuses very much on the beyond), but then has members of the choir sing their individual parts at different speeds.  The result is like a camera lens going in and out of focus: beginning as a sharp image, the harmonies blur and become unrecognizable as the temporal displacement misaligns notes that should sound together, then gradually coalesce again at the phrase endings.


Full Fathom Five
music: Allan Bevan
text: William Shakespeare (The Tempest)

This famous text is sung by the “airy spirit” Ariel to lead the shipwrecked Ferdinand to Prospero, in part by convincing Ferdinand that his father drowned in the wreck.

V. The Spirit of Love

In our final set of pieces we move from exalted spiritual realms to the more tangible emotion of human love, both happy and unhappy.  If this seems a bit of a stretch, then take this as our conductor’s excuse to program some straight-forward, singable tunes for the men – and you!  We end with a homage, in love, to music itself, using a text which Vaughan Williams appropriately called ‘the serenade to music.’

Nigra Sum
music: Pablo Casals
text: Song of Songs

And So It Goes
music and text: Billy Joel,
arr. Bob Chilcott and Robert Sund

How Sweet the Moonlight Sleeps
music: Michael Head, arr. Stephen Smith
text: William Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice)

Notes © 2007 by Stephen Wright, all rights reserved.

Posted by bruce on February 21, 2007 at 2:09 PM
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