The Crossing plays Gavin Bryars and Tõnu Kõrvits

Bryars’s choral work sets selections from Centuries of Meditation by Thomas Traherne, a 17th-century theologian whose works were rescued from obscurity in the early years of the 20th century. Most of Traherne’s words remained unpublished for 200 years but he seems to finally have found an audience.

The Fifth Century finds a home in the 21st

The premiere of The Fifth Century at the end of The Crossing’s latest concert marked the second time I’ve attended a premiere that added music to Traherne’s prose. In 2012, the Network for New Music debuted Donald St. Pierre’s Morning Has Broken, a moving piece that began, "What have men to do in this world but to make themselves happy?"

Bryars’s settings stayed within a narrow emotional range but they were never dull. He achieved variety by moving the center of interest through the different parts of the chorus, instead of playing the different sections against each other. The sonorous fullness of the Prism Saxophone Quartet added body and striking flashes of brilliance. The result was a piece that made you feel you were listening to the heartbeat of the universe.

From the court to the sea

The concert opened with one of Bryars’s older works, "Two Love Songs," a pair of sonnets by Petrarch arranged for a female chorus. This was another piece that sounded movingly serene, even though Bryars played the sopranos against the altos. To me, the two sections of the chorus evoked the two sides of the courtly tradition of romantic love; the altos captured the calm of the lover ennobled by his feelings while the sopranos expressed more radiant emotions.

The Crossing’s conductor, Donald Nally, varied the pace by placing a more robust piece between Bryars’ two contributions. Tonu Korvits’ Hymns from the Northern Coast sets five Swedish maritime hymns for chorus and saxophone quartet. The musical effects start with a choral imitation of clamoring bells and the subjects include visions of heaven, sinking ships, and an evening prayer that had the same effect as a perfectly nuanced rendition of Taps. The accompaniment was another advertisement for the saxophone quartet’s ability to add the colors and moods of the trombone, the horn, and the trumpet.