Eastern Pictures

The thread linking the choral compositions of Gustav Holst, Leonard Bernstein and Giya Kancheli is the ethical and political nature of the spirituality they evoke. The composers’ personalities and experiences differ. Holst was a militant socialist from a young age and encountered Indian spirituality through his search for something that would affirm the values of peace and equality between human beings. Leonard Bernstein was politically engaged especially in the 1960s, and while he had a genuine affection for Kennedy, to whom he dedicated the Kaddish Symphony (1963) shortly after the president’s assassination, he was firmly opposed to the Vietnam War and adopted a radical ethical tone that at the beginning of the 1970s led him to abandon politics, though not his ideals of peace and brotherhood. Giya Kancheli’s journey of spiritual reflection was capable of uniting his native religious traditions with contemporary ecological sensitivity.

The Georgian Giya Kancheli, who died in 2019 aged 84, was marginalised by the Soviet regime almost to the point of oblivion, with the exception of his film scores. After the fall of the regime, however, he returned to the centre of the international stage, rising to become one of the most authentic and original figures in contemporary music. His works are rarefied, often featuring long, sustained notes and sounds evoking emptiness and distance to create a special aura. The text in Amao omi is limited to single words that have both a phonetic and evocative function and evokes the sky, the sun and splendour. An Alleluia is sung, and questions are posed that are as vague as they are fundamental. Everything floats in an atmosphere of suspension created partly by a saxophone quartet that, like a second antiphonal choir, wraps around the sound of the voices.

Amao omi means “senseless war” in Georgian, and Kancheli’s objective is conciliation, peace, a search for meaning by overcoming disorientation. He draws inspiration from the chant of Orthodox monasteries, mixing a sense of contemplation and strength, and providing sonorities that brush with silence to reconstruct an ecology of listening and a habitat in which humans can feel part of a single community.

Leonard Bernstein wrote the Chichester Psalms in early 1965. The piece was commissioned by the Chichester Choral Festival in Britain, and the composer’s exchange of letters with the prior of the cathedral, Walter Hussey, provides insight into the genesis and character of the work. Bernstein first accepted the request with enthusiasm but hesitated for some time, sitting with a pencil in hand and a blank sheet of paper in front of him. Then came the idea of a suite of Psalms featuring “straightforward, melodic, rhythmic, youthful” music. However, it was impossible for him to imagine the Psalms being sung in any language other than the original Hebrew, so he asked his interlocutor a question: “do you object, in principle, to having Hebrew sung in your cathedral?”

Hussey had no objection, and just over two months later, on 11 May, Bernstein announced that the Psalms were finished and that they were “quite popular in tone (as you suggested, there is also a hint of West Side Story)”, with “an old-fashioned sweetness even in the most violent moments”. Bernstein also reused excerpts from a musical based on a text by Thornton Wilder, The Skin of our Teeth, which he had been preparing at the same time but ultimately abandoned along the way.

The composer gave the following description in his letter:

The work is in three movements […] each of which contains a complete Psalm and one or more versions of a complementary Psalm, which contrasts or reinforces the first. The first movement opens with verse 3 of Psalm 108, which evokes praise, and is followed by the entire Psalm 100, a wild and joyful dance in the spirit of David. The second is Psalm 23, complete with a treble solo voice and harp that is brutally interrupted by adult voices with threats of war and violence (Psalm 2, verses 1-4). This movement ends without reconciliation between the two elements, faith and fear, which are intertwined. The third opens with an orchestral prelude based on the opening chorale, whose assertive harmonies, however, now turn into something painful. After a crisis, the tension suddenly eases and the choir enters humbly, peacefully, singing the complete Psalm 131 in what is almost a folk song (albeit in 10/4!). […] In this atmosphere of humility there is a final choral coda (Psalm 133, verse 1), a prayer for peace.

Before performing the work in Britain, Bernstein conducted the Chichester Psalms in New York with four solo voices and a mixed choir. He prepared two types of orchestration: a larger one with strings, winds and a large percussion section, and another with harp, organ and percussion that provide the folk colour the composer wanted.

Gustav Holst first encountered texts from the Hindu tradition at the end of the 19th century while seeking to better understand the common foundations of human spirituality. Between 1899 and 1906, he wrote a three-act opera, Sita, based on a story from the Ramayana and, in 1908, a chamber opera based on the Mahabharata. In the same year, he began work on the oldest text of Hindu culture: the Rig Veda, which was written between 1,500 and 1,000 BC and whose title means ‘praise’ and ‘knowledge’. In order to create a clear, comprehensible text capable of transporting Western listeners into a new spiritual world, Holst enrolled on a Sanskrit course at University College London with the aim of eventually creating his own translation. He worked on the text till 1916, providing enough material for four sets of choral hymns. During the same period, he also composed Two Eastern Pictures (1910) and The Cloud Messenger(1913), both based on his own translations of the poet Kālidāsa (4th-5th century AD).

Holst scored each of the Choral hymns from the Rig Veda differently. The first group is for mixed choir and orchestra; the second and third for female choir and harp; the fourth for male choir and orchestra. Drawing on the classical music of India, Holst combined oriental rhythms and harmonies with elements from Western music, in particular the Phrygian and Mysolid “modes”. Of the over one thousand poetic texts that form the Rig Veda, Holst chose a total of 14, concentrating on those he felt were most likely to communicate universal values. Those of the third group are related to nature and creation: Hymn to the Dawn is a song about the beginning of the world; Hymn to the Waters refers to the life force of waters, which pour down on the earth from the sky; Hymn to Vena tells of a newborn child, the pinnacle of creation, and praises the light of the sun in a mist enveloping our intellect, revealing the common links binding humanity; Hymn of the Travellers is a metaphor for human life as a journey in which the path is more important than the goal.

Stefano Catucci