Eric Whitacre is a beloved choral composer. I love what he does harmonically with his music, and up until now I have loved every piece of his that I have heard. Recently I have been sitting with his 12-movement work, The Sacred Veil, in a sub assignment for a local community choir.
I confess, I have trouble with the work. It starts with a couple’s meeting and falling in love, and then quickly dives into a cancer diagnosis. The bulk of the music tells the story of the family grappling with the progressive loss of their wife and mother who died at the age of 36 of ovarian cancer.
The poetry is exquisitely set. There is no question that Whitacre is a master at setting text. The music is lovely, beautiful, perfectly expressing the love of a man and a woman, of a woman for her children, of the tenderness in their relationships. It is also harsh, frantic, desperate, portraying the awful reality of facing a fatal diagnosis and losing a cherished loved one. The whole work is undergirded with sadness and awash with the shadow of death.
I understand this is the reality that many cancer patients and their families must grapple with. I understand the gravity of their experience, the crippling fear at hearing a fatal diagnosis, the trauma and anger and despair that arise and threaten to take hold during this kind of trial. I don’t think any of that should be minimized or dismissed. But I question why it must be put into an artistic work that a director and group of singers must sit with for weeks on end. Why would you want others to taste any semblance of your trauma and grief? What is the point of taking an audience through this journey? Why would anyone who has faced similar circumstances want to relive their struggle?
As artists, we strive to communicate honestly and meaningfully with our audience. We want to share something with them that will touch them emotionally, offering a piece of us – something that we have learned or gained from the music itself or that it has allowed us to express from our own life experiences.
I think Whitacre wrote this work because he loved his friend, the poet who lost his wife. I think it was his way of saying, “I see you, I understand what you are going through/went through, and I love you.” It is deeply personal for both of them.
Maybe that is what solace we can offer friends when they go through desperately painful times – our presence, our trying to make sense of their struggle as they go through it, our love. How wonderful to have friendships like these – but in our darkest hours, when friends aren’t around, we need something more.
In desperate, painful times, we need something beyond human connection; we need the divine. We need supernatural intervention, comfort, hope. We can’t find it in ourselves, in trying to be strong for others, in accepting the inevitability of death with no tomorrow.
Music offers temporary solace, but even it is not enough to buoy us when we feel like we are drowning. That kind of strength and hope can only be found in Jesus, the very person of God who broke into our world in human form, who bore our sorrows and sat in our grief – the effects of our sinful rebellion against God – and took the wrath of God due us upon Himself as He died on the cross. Many musical works have been written about His tragic death. But the story doesn’t end there; He rose from the dead three days later, proving His victory over death once and for all, offering hope to all who look to Him and believe. We no longer have to sit in our grief, because it isn’t the end. For the believer in Jesus, death is freedom from the troubles of our world and the doorway into eternal life. His presence is the soul-sustaining strength that we need to bear our burdens in life.
I have much respect for Eric Whitacre’s beautiful artistry in composition, and I will rehearse this piece with choir and orchestra with all the attention and expression that I would give to any choral masterwork. But I wish he would have included the hope of the gospel – the life-giving message of freedom from the fear of death, and the unmatched love of our Heavenly Father shown in the gift of His Son, Jesus Christ.
I wonder if Whitacre knows that the Sacred Veil has been torn clear through, for on the day Jesus died on the cross the veil in the Jewish temple in Jerusalem was split in two, signifying His ultimate defeat of death. I wonder if he knows there is a path to true life, a way for us to connect with God Himself in this life as well as in the life to come?
Maybe his next project could be a re-setting of the text of Brahms’ Requiem, which comes from the Lutheran Bible and offers incredible hope and peace, both now and for eternity.
To hear Eric Whitacre’s thoughts on The Sacred Veil as a whole, as well as what inspired each individual movement, take a look at his video clips here.
See the piece live and in person as Kirkland Choral Society teams up with Philharmonia Northwest to present it this May. Get your tickets here.
Keep up with my writing by subscribing to At Home with Classical Piano on Substack.