The story of Crossing Over (part 2)

Welcome to part 2 of the story of Crossing Over, where we continue the narrative of our album. To read part 1, click here.

 A painful memory
Requiem, Jón Leifs

After a moment of stillness and clarity in the Kedrov Our Father​, we shift to a new harmonic center for Leif’s stunning Requiem, dropping a minor third to A. We retain the homophonic texture of the Kedrov, but it becomes shrouded by an aching feeling of grief. 

​For someone nearing death, I feel this is one of those blurred dreamlike images of things long past – of dear ones loved and lost. A duality between joy and sadness: grieving for loved ones whose lives have ended, but grateful for a life filled with love.

Leifs is best-known for his orchestral music, which is quite tempestuous (described as “brutal” and “primordial”), and oft based on natural phenomena of his extremely geologically volatile native country of Iceland (think volcanoes and waterfalls). 

His Requiem is quite different in feel than the rest of his output, likely because it emerged from a time of profound personal tragedy.

​In 1947, his daughter Lif drowned while swimming off the coast of Sweden shortly before her 18th birthday. In the weeks that followed, Leifs composed his Requiem while his family was bringing her body to Iceland for burial.

Our image from the album notes attempts to capture the profoundly somber feeling of the piece. 

Only five minutes in length, he sets a collage of Icelandic folk images and poetry.

​The text is quite spare, focusing on simple images of death in nature, interspersed with highly personal poetic excerpts that bring Leif’s own tragedy into focus.

The music reflects this simple elegance. The feel is of a gentle but moving funeral procession in the Icelandic folk tradition (andante, molto tranquillo). The strong downbeat of each bar also creates an almost wave-like motion to the music, which is particularly compelling given the story of the piece.

Almost the entire piece is some variation of an A chord – major, minor, and an open fifth. The harmonic shifts through these variations are sudden and frequent, like the pangs of remorse and happy memories that come during a time of tragedy - it is as if every few measures takes us through several stages of grief. 

As you listen to the recording, glance at the text and translation provided below. One of our own basses, Peter Walker, spent a lot of time crafting and editing an existing version of the English translation because he was passionate about retaining the metrical feel and powerful alliteration of the original Icelandic lullaby form. Peter read this in our concerts before we sang the piece, and I think it took the experience to an entirely new level for all of us. 

Sofinn er fifill
fagr í haga,
mús undir mosa,
már á báru,
lauf á limi,
ljós í lofti,
hjörtr á Heiði
en í hafi fiskar.

Sefr sell í sjó,
svanr á báru,
már í holmi,
maangi au svæfir.
Sofa manna börn
í mjúku rúmi,
bía og kveða,
en babbi þau svæfir.
Sof þú nú sæl og sigrgefin.
Sofðu eg unni þér.

Sofinn er
fifill fagr í haga,
mús undir mosa,
már á báru,
Blæju yfir bæ
búanda lúins
dimmra, drauma
dró nóttúr sjó.

Við skulum gleyma
grát og sorg;
gott er heim að snúa.
Láttu þig dreyma
bjarta borg,
búna þeim, er trúa.

Sofinn er fifill
fagr í haga,
mús undir mosa,
már á báru,
Sof þú nú sæl og sigrgefin.
​Sofðu, eg unni þér. 

From Icelandic folk poetry and Magnusarkvioa by Jonas Hallgrimsson 

The fair flower
sleeps in the field,
The mouse under moss,
The mew gull on the swell,
The leaf on the limb,
The light in the lofty air,
The hart on the heath,
And the haddock in the ocean.

The seal sleeps in the sea,
The swan on the wave,
The mew gull on the rock-isle,
With no one to lull them.
The young child sleeps
In a soft bed,
Cooing and prattling,
As a parent lulls her.
Sleep now saintly and sanctified.
Sleep, I love you.

The fair dandelion
sleeps in the field,
The mouse under moss,
The mew gull on the swell,
A veil covers the village
The man is very tired
Dreams drew
dark night from the sea.

We should say goodbye
To grief and sorrow,
And go home to happiness.
May you dream
of the shining city,
Where the souls of the faithful dwell.

The fair dandelion
​sleeps in the field,
The mouse under moss,
The mew gull on the swell,
Sleep now saintly and sanctified.
Sleep, I love you.

Poetic English translation edited and modified by Peter Walker (source of original translation unknown)

Denial
Heliocentric Meditation, Robert Vuichard

Excerpts from Meditation XVII 
PERCHANCE he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill that he knows not it tolls for him... 
…Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises?...No man is an island…every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main…All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language…God’s hand is in every translation, and His hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again, for in that library every book shall lie open to one another…Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. 
—John Donne 

After the achingly sad but somewhat disembodied Reqiuem, our next piece takes us to a more outwardly expressive place, in a world premiere recording of Heliocentric Meditation by composer Robert Vuichard. 

I feel this piece as the apex of the album.

​For the person approaching death, this is the moment of crisis, of tortured uncertainty over whether he or she is part of something larger, or simply an island that will sink back into the sea.

It is also an extremely hallucinatory moment. It has passages that feel like they could emerge from the medication-induced haze that many 21st century people experience in their final hours in a hospital. 

I’ve talked to Robert at length about this piece. He is trying to capture the eternal struggle “are we a part of something larger”…“if one man dies, does the whole world mourn?”

He does so by alternating between human questions (expressed through small group or homophonic sections) and universal (as in the broader universe) images created through vast spatial cascades that break the choir into 12 parts. "From earthly space to heavenly space and back again."

It is the longest piece on the album, and it goes through striking evolutions as the piece alternates between textures and textual ideas. Some dissonances are deeply unsettling, while some of the cadences are truly ecstatic. 

As I listen, I find my imagination alternating between images of my world (faces of loved ones) and visions of the absurdly larger universe (huge stars or planets radiating energy photographed by the Hubble telescope) that make my individual perspective seem trivial.

​Thank you for reading - You can now read Part 3 of this series as well!  Oh, and if you don't yet have your own copy, you can find it on Amazon and iTunes :-)
- Matthew Guard, Artistic Director