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Words as Symbols, Notes as Joy New York
St. Peter’s Church
06/20/2025 -
Gavin Bryars: The Last Days of Immanuel Kant
Aaron Helgeson: The Book of Never
The Crossing, Donald Nally (Conductor)
The Crossing (© Charles Grove)
“Land, land, my dear friends. I see land!”
Immanuel Kant when his servant finally brought him his morning coffee (from Harry Rolnick, The Complete Book of Coffee)
“Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason
One can’t call an evening of The Crossing a choral concert. The two‑dozen singers under Donald Nally invariably offer musical and verbal revelations. Last night, the words of Thomas De Quincey, Immanuel Kant, Oscar Wilde and a rare 10th Century book of prayers embracing both religion and paganism, The notes came from one composer who paints the most delicate pictures; and one composer whose music stemmed from the 12th Century motets of Léonin and Pérotin to tone clusters resplendent of Penderecki
Briefly, then, The Crossing was a Mass without religion, sung by a chorus less of angelic voices than vocal revelation.
The a capella voices, led by Mr. Nally did have a balance and lucidity rarely found in larger ensembles. While I was happy to see the complex series of words–quotes within quotes, narration and drama–flashed on the wall (as well as being printed in the program), one feels that even when The Crossing was on the cusp of atonality, one could hear the verbal phonemes. (Though I was happy to see them written.)
Both works had the commonality of poetry. But each gave a different frame to the words themselves.
While Aaron Helgeson’s The Book of Never had a singular magic, the great British composer Gavin Bryars had the greater challenge. I had heard his music last in Philadelphia, where The Crossing had presented his settings from the poetry of Wendell Berry. Mr. Berry’s poetry sings for itself–so all Mr. Bryars needed was to gild the lilies (the poetry is agrarian) with lovely sounds.
Thomas De Quincey, though, wrote a series of prose narration on the dying and death of an already world‑famous philosopher. Musically, the challenge was setting death’s “four decays”, the laments of poetry and the last day, the torments of restless sleep, the hallucinations.
Mr. Bryars could have rendered Kant’s “categorical imperative” (a global improvement to the tribal Golden Rule) to liturgical text. Instead, he took varied sections of De Quincey’s tribute, and gave us the torment of death. Little was literal (yes, Kant’s growing anguish was either more dissonant or, as in final sleep, quieter.
At the end, one had relished no particular section as the work in entirety, an understanding of death itself.
G. Bryars/A. Helgeson (© Eamonn McCabe/Sam Gehrke)
Aaron Helgeson’s The Book of Never was thematically far more complex than the elementary act of dying. Briefly, in 999 A.D., a Russian monk wrote a possibly ancient Slavonic text which encompassed both orthodox belief and pagan rituals. This codex was of course burned but in the last century was found, the puzzle assembled, the words translated.
Remote from rationality, the Novgorod Codex is more chimeric than Essene Scrolls or St. John Revelations. Augmenting this, Mr. Helgeson added poetry by Neruda, Stein. Wilde and others. Not individually named in the program, but one can easily reveal Neruda’s words about the poor. The other declarations I felt could have come from the mystical cries of Hildegarde of Bingen.
Yet it was the music which counted here. The Crossing stared with a prayer directly out of 11th or 12th Century polyphonic organum, which itself sounds dissonant to our 21st Century ears. Mr. Helgeson continued through a very fast 45 minutes, the harmonies darting forth, the words repeated endlessly when necessary.
Simple phrases as “And you bow down” or “Shouting” are repeated either with consonance or piercing minor 2nds. The chorus could “shout” or implore “Tell me” over and over again, with notes accenting or hiding the words.
The logic is that, while those words were close to glossolalia intonations, Mr. Helgeson understands that music means nothing logically by itself. Rather, that his ecstatic choral writing would be feeling, spirit. Nothing more.
So, did we feel it? Were we spiritually moved? Damned if I know. But the final word, an extended “Now” drifting into silence, was enough for another Crossing phenomena transcending symbolic notes and letters into irrational joy.
Harry Rolnick
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