Blog Post #6 - Scott Crissman - Eric Whitacre

I often discuss music and its ability to express the holy, but I have spoken very little about the conflict between the sacred and profane in music. A contemporary composer whom I believe embraces and encapsulates this tension is the American Eric Whitacre. He is a young composer very well known for much of his work for chorus and wind ensemble. His music has the ability almost unequivocally profoundly affect me and make me think whether I'm hearing a work for the first time or the fiftieth. It carries all the qualities of the holy and the sublime, yet only one choral piece to my knowledge is set to a specifically religious text, and many are explicitly secular. "When David Heard," using only a few lines of text from the Bible, aurally encompasses the massively overhanging grief King David feels at the news of his son Absalom's death, repeating and intensifying these few words across the space of around twelve minutes.
The piece I'd like to focus on, however, as a juxtaposition and mingling of the sacred and profane, is "A Boy and a Girl," with text by Octavio Paz and translated by Muriel Rukeyser:


Stretched out on the grass,

a boy and a girl.
Savoring their oranges,
giving their kisses like waves exchanging foam.

Stretched out on the beach,

a boy and a girl.
Savoring their limes,
giving their kisses like clouds exchanging foam.

Stretched out underground,
a boy and a girl.
Saying nothing, never kissing,
giving silence for silence.




The text's meaning is debatable, with some claiming that it is explicitly sexual and others (myself included here) that it is more innocent and focused on the relationship between the boy and the girl, but either way it is not a specifically religious text. It is my opinion, however, that the profane (a human relationship) is made sacred through the treatment of the situation by Paz and through the extremely tender and at times unexpected musical setting by Whitacre. The extreme emotion imparted by Whitacre's harmonic structures and rhythmic impulses and the otherworldliness on phrases like "stretched out on the beach" and "saying nothing, never kissing" grants this secular "story" a decidedly "holy" transformation.