Program Notes
The Passion of St. Cecilia - (Text by Charles Anthony Silvestri - Music by Mark Buller)
From composer Mark Buller:
The Passion of St. Cecilia was commissioned by Houston Chamber Choir in 2021 to celebrate its 25th anniversary. As we all remember, this was a challenging time, with the daily COVID numbers something many of us checked alongside the weather forecasts. I know I can’t have been the only one to wonder if choral singing itself faced an uncertain future given its “superspreader” potential. Faced with the daunting task of celebrating something which seemed in startling danger of becoming ephemeral, I turned to a frequent collaborator, the poet Charles Anthony Silvestri. We immediately thought of St. Cecilia, the patron saint of musicians and, as it turns out, an avatar of sorts for the whole situation. As tradition tells us, Cecilia had found herself in an unenviable situation: despite dedicating herself solely to God, her parents promised her in marriage to a nobleman. In desperation and agony, she cried out in song in her heart – so beautifully that an angel intervened and set everything to rights. Tony’s text is structured in three movements: one setting the scene, one a sort of feminist take on a medieval mystery play, and a finale that brings the action into the present day. I’m so grateful to Tony for his glorious and timeless text, and to Bob and the Choir for making this piece possible.
Overboard- (Words by Leah Lax - Music by Mark Buller)
Houston Grand Opera originally commissioned Leah Lax and Mark Buller to write Overboard, then performed it multiple subsequent years on Veterans’ Day.
From librettist Leah Lax:
At 11 pm, March 1, 1942, in the Sunda Strait off of what is now Jakarta, Japanese warships attacked the Allies’ Asiatic Fleet, including the USS Houston and HMS Perth, which were already damaged from recent battles. Both were headed to port for repairs under cover of darkness, their crews exhausted. American intelligence guiding them home was unaware of a Japanese flotia assembling in their path that night preparing to invade Java. The Houston and the Perth sailed right into them. They were fired upon at such close range that enemy missiles passed through the Houston and sank two of their own ships on the other side. The USS Houston and the HMS Perth went down within the hour. Two thirds of the two crews – over fifteen hundred men – were killed. The rest spent the night clinging to debris in the water. Next morning, Japanese sailors plucked the lucky ones out and sent them to jungle prison camps. Based on videotapes taken postwar of American, Australian, and Japanese survivors of that battle, Overboard commemorates the deaths of servicemen sent into impossible situations, and the damaged lives survivors often have to manage after war.
Mass in Exile - (Words by Leah Lax - Music by Mark Buller)
From composer Mark Buller:
In September of 2020, in the tenuous aftermath of lockdown and following the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, I found myself appalled by the response to those murders from people I knew from my religious past. I grew up in a closed fundamentalist community, but left them when I came to the conviction that freedom of thought was essential to my search for my own truth and meaning, that is, to my becoming an artist. I posted on social media the rarely quoted Psalm 58, which takes rulers to task for subverting justice, then added, “We are the nation the prophets railed against, as we tear babies from their mothers, sterilize female immigrants, prosecute those who give water to refugees and sanction cold-blooded murder by cop. God help us.” When librettist Leah Lax commented, “Mark I still hear this as your truest music,” I responded, “Let’s write a mass, Leah! Text by a former Orthodox Jew and music by a former fundamentalist!”
From librettist Leah Lax:
I was intrigued. With its rich spiritual themes, a mass seemed just the vehicle, hearkening back to the majesty and power of Bach’s B Minor mass to modern iterations from Vaughan Williams to Janácěk to Bernstein. It seemed perfect to express the sense of exile Mark and I share, to assert our continued ownership of those sacred texts long ago implanted in us that in some part formed us, and to depict our mutual efforts toward a new and open-eyed kind of faith within this broken world.
The opening movement, For Want of Refuge, takes the theme of the Miserere that begins a classic mass – a call for mercy. My text here was inspired by the thousands of children taken from their parents at the Texas border, most never to return, and by Matthew 19:14 “Allow the children to come until me.”
Credo in Exile: Classically, the Credo is a long assertion of belief. Instead, this movement depicts Mark as a child laboring under those long assertions and religious demands that surrounded him throughout his childhood. The boy lies awake at night terrified that he will die in his sleep and go to hell because of his sins. The chorus as backdrop is his demanding community immersed in blissfully seductive prayer.
Peaceable Kingdom Gloria, classically an exultation, is here filled with lines from the Biblical Song of Songs. My text was inspired by its noted Hebrew translator Chana Bloch, who wrote, “Song of Songs locates the Peaceful Kingdom in human love.” Mark and I both feel we had to find ourselves as distinct from religion and community before we could arrive at our loving marriages. In this deeply personal movement, we speak to our beloved wives in turn.
As Water Flows Away includes numerous references to Psalm 58, the psalm that sparked this project, which takes rulers to task for misusing their power. Inserted at the heart of the work, this movement references the Prayer for the Government that has been part of Jewish liturgy since the 14th century, and was inspired by Jeremiah 29:7: “And seek the welfare of the state in which I have exiled you.”
Mercy returns to the opening Miserere call for mercy, but I translated it here into the style of ancient Jewish sage Hillel, who said, “If I am not for myself, who am I? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when (Hebrew: ay-mah-tie)?” asking instead, If I have no mercy, what am I? Without your mercy, who am I?
Earth Sanctus: Body and Blood parallels the Sanctus of a classic Mass, which opens with the “Holy, holy, holy” prayer shared by Jewish and Christian liturgy, meant as a wakeup call to faith. This movement instead asks what is holy, then finds holiness in lifegiving water and the nurture buried within our ailing earth. Acknowledging our stewardship of a broken world, we find ourselves no longer in exile. We then confront the mystery of God “in the wreck of this unfinished song.”
When All Else Falls Away channels the Benedictus blessing to go in peace that ends the classic Sanctus. In this movement, the mature spirit finds a path in the broken world.