Poverello

GIVING

All through our 40 years of being the Singapore Youth Choir, and now the SYC Ensemble Singers, we have always been mindful of the responsibilities that come with being the 'national' choir - the civic duty to give back to those who have given us the stature, the chance to be what we are.

Although we have previously donated our voices on various occasions, this marks our first full-length charity performance - significantly in a sacred space, where vocal polyphony 'grew up'. The first vocal music was written to buttress the Word, and for close to a millenium now, choral music has grown exponentially more sophisticated with each passing century.

Tonight in the Church of St Mary of the Angels, we acknowledge sacred music's roots by performing some 16th century liturgical music written by three of the most prominent church musicians of their time - Byrd, Palestrina and Victoria. Listening to their music, you can picture the clean graceful arches of English Tudor churches, the long nave and lofty domes of Roman cathedrals, the clusters of ornaments and arabesque reliefs enriching bare walls and pilasters of early Spanish renaissance chapels. If "architecture is music frozen in time" (Goethe), then this music is surely architecture in motion. How apt for us to sing in aid of a church building fund.

We also perform an offering of sacred music from the other end of the timeline: the music of our place and time. In Asia, some 400 years after missionaries brought us Christianity, we have made their music our own - colonizing western notation with the interlocking rhythms, ostinati, melodies and textures that are distinctly of this region.

For the religious order left behind by St Francis of Assisi, Patron of Ecology, we are pleased to premiere three meaningful anniversary commissions on this evening, two days away from his feast day. Matsushita paints a still white otherworld of the Aizu basin, enclosed by volcanic mountains, disturbed by the occasional cheerful breeze in his setting of Aizu Bandaisan, a Japanese folksong. Grau's Herman Lluvia (Sister Rain) - by happy coincidence a Franciscan reference to the Virgin Mary - is a (eu)rhythmic prayer for water to kiss the earth, to heal her children.

Commissioning new music, dedicating the larger part of our repertoire to the work of living composers, is our way of ensuring a future for choral music and musicians. We have always believed that it is not what we have, but what we do with it that matter. Giving our voices to things other than ourselves, things bigger than ourselves, we wish to make a difference.

Our third commissioned work tonight is a Cayabyab setting of the Prayer for Peace originally attributed to St Francis, Preghiera Semplice. In closing with this simple prayer, in the name of choirs, singers and choir conductors everywhere, we hope to be - literally - instruments of peace.