The SACRED VEIL
(2019) for composer Eric Whitacre
This work features a series of poems written about my relationship with my late wife Julie, her battle with ovarian cancer, and the grief I experienced as a result of her passing in 2005. This is the most intensely personal poetry I have ever written, and it evoked exquisite and heart-breaking music from composer Eric Whitacre. Along with my own poetry are interspersed writings by Julie and by Whitacre as well. The Los Angeles Master Chorale, soloists, and Whitacre were able to meet just before the pandemic hit and lay down a magnificent recording of the work.
​
Now that the pandemic is subsiding and choirs are performing once again, there have been several excellent performances of The Sacred Veil throughout the world.
​
Here is a link to the composer's website page for The Sacred Veil:
https://ericwhitacre.com/music-catalog/the-sacred-veil
The Sacred Veil may be the single most important musical contribution in our time, perhaps in any time, to a non-religious, as well as non-political—perhaps we might say non-teleological understanding of death and loss. Its length and difficulty may preclude it from inclusion in your average funeral, but to experience it in performance with 40 singers, or perhaps in recorded form, may be transformative for those whose grief, recent or deep-seated, has never completely found closure. —People’s World
​
The Sacred Veil is an intensely personal, deeply moving work of art; moreover, this Signum CD is rewarding in many different ways. One of the interesting qualities of The Sacred Veil is the way it balances intimacy with expression. The lyrics focus on the really private story of Julia’s passing, told from the perspective of her husband, Charles. At the same time, the lyrics are used to evoke Silvestri’s concept of a thin veil that separates the past from the future, the living from the dead, the temporal from the eternal. A simple concept intellectually, but packed with mystery and complexity as a lived experience. Whitacre’s musical setting of the lyrics uses simple melodies played by the piano and the cello to provide a ground for the sometimes straightforward, sometimes soaringly complex choral parts. —Classical Candor
​
Whitacre's score provides an elegiac counterpoint to Silvestri's words, which deal with stages of love, life, and loss with heartbreaking directness. Over twelve movements, we witness Julie's journey as the cancer advances, the text often devastating in its sharing of her diary entries, journals, and e-mail messages, until death inevitably arrives. What the creators have done with The Sacred Veil is catalyze personal suffering into cathartic art capable of resonating universally. —Textura
​
The Sacred Veil, Whitacre's most extended work to date, is effectively a poignant secular requiem for Silvestri's wife, Julia, charting her illness and death from cancer and the shock and grief of her husband and two young children as they travelled with her on the journey--as did Whitacre himself. ...It is a work that will speak eloquently to modern generations and is performed here with great tenderness by the choir that gave the premiere in 2019. —Choir and Organ
Video Links
There are several excellent videos on the web featuring performances of The Sacred Veil. Follow the links below to visit Eric's excellent website, which includes a great deal of Sacred Veil content, for the Los Angeles Master Chorale recording, featured on the composer's YouTube channel, and for an excellent performance by the CSULB Singers, directed by Jonathan Talberg.
At long last, the recording of
The Sacred Veil
is available, released on
August 28, 2020.
​
Members of the
Los Angeles Master Chorale
performed, along with
pianist Lisa Edwards
and
cellist Jeffrey Zeigler
all under the direction of the composer, Eric Whitacre.
You can purchase a copy of the recording HERE.
It is now available for purchase, download, and on various streaming services.
Spread the news!
The Sacred Veil
list of movements
1. The Veil Opens
2. In a Dark and Distant Year
3. Home
4. Magnetic Poetry
5. Whenever There Is Birth
6. I’m Afraid
7. I Am Here
8. Delicious Times
9. One Last Breath
10. Dear Friends
11. You Rise, I Fall
12. Child of Wonder
The Sacred Veil
Complete Texts
1. The Veil Opens
Whenever there is birth or death,
The sacred veil between the worlds
Grows thin and opens slightly up
Just long enough for Love to slip,
Silent, either in or out
Of this our fragile, fleeting world,
Whence or whither a new home waits.
And our beloved ones draw near,
In rapt anticipation, or
In weary gratitude, they stand;
Our loved ones stand so close, right here,
Just on the other side
Of Eternity.
— Charles Anthony Silvestri
2. In a Dark and Distant Year
In a dark and distant year,
A wand’rer ancient and austere,
He surrounds himself with books he’s never read.
He was a child then, the world inside his head.
He would often wonder, “Who
Could love a dreamer such as you?”
And so he trusted no one’s shadow but his own.
He was a fool then, and he was all alone.
Then quite to his surprise,
Passing there before his eyes,
A girl unlikely, gently laughing by the shore.
She had unlocked his heart and let his spirit soar!
And on that golden, hopeful day
The boy was bold enough to say,
“Come, hold my deepest secrets here among the foam;
You are the world to me, and you… you feel like home.”
— Charles Anthony Silvestri
3. Home
You feel like home.
— Charles Anthony Silvestri
4. Magnetic Poetry
The enormous need
Egg-ache whispers urging
Moon wind chanting like sweet languid honey
Sleep-swimming through sweaty summer
Dream mists
The delirious girl
Woman goddess
Not yet a mother
But the spring life force is so near
What a bare symphony here
I recall our gorgeous moments together
Beneath my heaving peach skin
Essential you
Like some diamond gift incubating
In love
— Julia Lawrence Silvestri
5. Whenever There is Birth
(Instrumental)
6. I’m Afraid
I'm afraid we found something...
[Fifteen centimeter retroperitoneal cystic mass with complex internal septation...
The patient is a twenty-eight-year-old white female, primagravida, in the third trimester of pregnancy.]
I'm afraid we found something...
[Pathology confirms grades I, II, and III mucinous cystic adenocarcinoma with focal carcinosarcoma consistent with ovarian primary.
Recommend six cycles Taxol and Carboplatin...]
I'm afraid we've found something...
[…two left adnexal cysts and a
septated right adnexal cyst…]
I'm afraid we've found something...
[…exploratory laparotomy and excision of bilateral ovarian dermoids…]
I'm afraid we've found something...
[…uterus, tubes, sacral pain… ovaries… recurrent, recurrent, recurrent…]
[Exploratory laparotomy,
total abdominal hysterectomy,
bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy,
paraaortic lymphadenectomy
Bone scans in sacrum, left ilium, right acetabulum
metastasis...
metastasis…
metastasis…]
I'm afraid we found something...
I'm afraid we found something...
I'm afraid.
— Charles Anthony Silvestri
7. I Am Here
(Instrumental)
8. Delicious Times
My hair started to fall out at precisely 1:00 on my birthday.
By Thursday it was making a terrible mess, so the kids helped me shave off whatever was left. They’d pick up my hair from the ground and slap it on my head and say, “You need more hair!” and they would laugh and laugh. Then at bath time I wore my wig, and they would beg me to take it off and put it back on again - they howled with laughter.
At bedtime, when my little one plays with my hair, she just stroked my head and said, “It’s so soft and clean!” She says, “Mommy, your hair went bye-bye but it’ll be back soon!” I was most worried about her because she loves my hair so much, but she is just fine!
Today I visited my oldest at school and he shouted, “Hey everybody! My mom has a wig!” He was the star of the class as all the kindergarten stared, open-mouthed, in wonderment. It’s been a very funny week. The kids have been amazing, and we’ve had some really delicious times together.
— Julia Lawrence Silvestri
9. One Last Breath
In a dark and distant year,
The wand’rer weary, full of fear,
Confronts a fated force more powerful than life —
A carriage made of sea
Has come to take his wife.
The waves too dark and deep to swim,
He hears his love cry out to him,
Her piercing anguish rising high above the foam.
“Please don’t let go of me
For you, you are my home!”
From the shore he sees his bride
As she fights hard against the tide.
He swears a sacred vow that every loved one keeps.
He steels himself,
Takes one last breath, and leaps.
— Eric Whitacre
10. Dear Friends
Dear friends: tonight I feel that I must ask you to pray.
I just got out of the hospital tonight and I received some bad news. The scan showed that I had numerous liver and peritoneal metastases. My doctor said this meant I most likely had about two months to live.
I am now asking you to pray as you have never prayed before. Please don’t pray that I will have a peaceful death. Please don’t feel pity for me. Just pray hard. Pray that I will be healed in a miraculous, supernatural way. Pray that God will give me wisdom as to what to do next. Fight with me, don’t give up on me.
— Julia Lawrence Silvestri
11. You Rise, I Fall
Listening to your labored breath,
Your struggle ends as mine begins.
You rise; I fall.
Fading, yet already gone;
What calls you I cannot provide.
You rise; I fall.
Broken, with a heavy hand
I reach to you, and close your eyes.
You rise; I fall.
— Charles Anthony Silvestri
12. Child of Wonder
Child of wonder
Child of sky
Time to end your voyage
Time to die.
Silent slumber calls you
Dark and deep
Child of soft surrender
Child of sleep.
—————
Child of sorrow
Child of rain
There is no tomorrow
No more pain.
Turn your silvered sail
Toward the light
Child of mourning
Child of night.
—————
Child of iridescence
Child of dream
Stars and moons will guide you
Down the stream.
Stretched on ocean waves
Of endless foam
Welcome home my child
Welcome home.
— Eric Whitacre