BLESSEDNESS

By Richard Knox

We live in a secular society -- who can deny it? We’re marked by our relentless focus on materialism and preoccupation with what established religions call “worldly” concerns. Recent statistics bear this out. In the early-1950s nearly half of all Americans went to church regularly. Today fewer than a third do.

And yet, lately the nation has been seeing a rise in the proportion of Americans who identify as “spiritual but not religious.” About seven in ten people Americans consider themselves spiritual in some sense. Nearly nine in ten believe people have a soul. Interestingly, this trend is led by millennials – a generation confronting adulthood in a disconcertingly unsettled world.

In one way and another, that’s what this concert is about. The individual elements are musically and textually diverse. But they speak to a universal need for a sense of the sacred, for moments of spiritual awareness.

“The thing that drew me to these pieces,” says Master Chorale director Dan Perkins, “was the way each comments in some way on the secular world’s use of religious dogma, even as our political institutions erode human rights and denigrate our fellow humans. We’re witnessing this every day.”

The program opens with "The Beatitudes," set by Arvo Pärt in the austere, other-worldly musical language that has made the music of this 90-year-old Estonian among the most frequently performed of all contemporary choral works. Pärt’s innovative style evokes the pure tones of what he calls “tintinnabuli,” or “little bells.” The BBC music commentator Tom Service writes that his music “sounds simultaneously ancient and modern.”

And so does the text of "The Beatitudes." The Sermon on the Mount, which Jesus preached in 28 C.E., only two years into his short ministry, encapsulates the essence of his teaching. It was (and is) a revolutionary doctrine – a challenge to the status quo that places love, humility and purity of heart over wealth, power and worldly authority. It was a dangerous thing to be doing at Jesus’ time. More than two millennia later, we can connect the dots.

Next comes "Diptych for Organ," a two-movement work performed by organist Rob St. Cyr. Composed in 2024 by Brenda Portman, the piece is by turns meditative and exuberant.

The familiar text of "Magnificat," set by the 20th-century English composer Gerald Finzi, is the most traditionally religious text on the program, a touchstone of countless Christian services. But Finzi himself was an agnostic tortured by an ever-present sense of mortality. He set this ancient canticle not as part of an orthodox religious service but as a concert work, implying an intent to take its meaning out of churchly liturgy and into the wider world.

According to Saint Luke, Mary’s song is a spontaneous outpouring of joy and humble gratitude at the news she’s been chosen to bear God’s son. But look again. It also sets forth a revolutionary message – some have even called it subversive. This lowly maiden foresees a world where God scatters the proud, brings the powerful down from their thrones, lifts up the lowly, fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich empty away. In short, Mary’s Magnificat expresses age-old aspirations…and foretells the Sermon on the Mount.

Following an intermission comes "Sacred Place," the spiritual center of these concerts and the most architecturally complex element. Composer Alex Berko is fascinated by what he calls the cross-pollination of artistic works of our time, and "Sacred Place" epitomizes this hybrid genre. He describes the piece as “an ecological service that connects the old with the new, the sacred with the secular.”

Berko modeled "Sacred Place" on “the six pillars” of a Jewish service, choosing commentators for each who “view the earth as sacred”:

▪️An opening prayer, in this case a quote from the New England poet Wendell Berry who meditates on an image of nature’s transcendent beauty poised against the weight of worldly concerns.

▪️Amidah, a Jewish prayer of thanksgiving, here represented by a rhapsodic passage about the uplifting beauty of Yosemite Valley, quoting a letter naturalist John Muir wrote to Teddy Roosevelt.

▪️Shema, a declaration of faith, here voiced by a poem by the American poet William Stafford urging us to listen for what the earth is saying.

▪️Mi Shebeirach, a prayer “to make our lives a blessing” and for r’fuah sh’leimah, a healing of both body and soul. This is the only one of the six movements that sets an actual Jewish liturgical text.

▪️Kaddish, a prayer honoring the memory of a deceased beloved one, drawn from the 20th-century Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, who likens the departed’s memory to “the afterglow of sunset at the margin of starry silence.”

▪️A closing prayer that recapitulates Berry’s celebration of the blessing of being alive.

"Until We Could," by Boston composer Oliver Caplan, presents yet another view of what it means to be blessed. The text comes from Richard Blanco, an engineer-turned-poet residing in Maine who delivered his poem on national unity at Barack Obama’s first inauguration. Here he offers an intensely personal argument for the right to be publicly accepted for who one is.

Before 2015, lawful marriage was denied to those in same-sex relationships. Then the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hedges that such couples could be recognized in the eyes of the law. In anticipation of the tenth anniversary of Obergefell, the Master Chorale commissioned Caplan to set Blanco’s poem "Until We Could," which expresses what it means to claim the public blessing of marriage. It’s the Master Chorale’s eighth Caplan collaboration and the second Blanco setting.

Caplan began this composition last year as “a celebratory project,” he says, but in recent months it has taken on a darker tone. “We are witnessing a painful rollback of gay rights – and civil rights more broadly,” he says. “Now, more than ever, we must redouble our efforts for freedom and equality…and carry forward the simplest and most enduring truth: Love is love.”

By happy coincidence, this premiere takes place only days after the Supreme Court rejected a petition to overturn its 2015 ruling. That means at least six of the nine justices voted to let same-sex marriages stand – an outcome no one took for granted.

“I’m both relieved and overjoyed,” Caplan said. His wedding to husband Chris came just three weeks before Obergefell.

A final word on this program: Dan emphasizes that, while the Master Chorale’s aim is to raise your spiritual awareness for the duration of these concerts, that is not enough. We all hope the eloquence of this music will motivate action of whatever sort you care to undertake.

Richard Knox is a Master Chorale baritone who writes commentary on its concert programs.