Event: World Premiere of Sir John Tavener's Miroir de Poèmes
Date: Oct. 10th, 2009
Venue: Chan Centre for the Performing Arts


"People do not buy art in Vancouver"
-Andy Warhol

Going to a premiere performance of a new work by such a famous and important contemporary composer right here in little 'ol Vancouver is such a rare and amazing opportunity that I arrived early expecting mongol hordes, especially considering the publicity on the radio and the full page interview in the entertainment section of the Vancouver Sun newspaper . I was a bit surprised to discover just a few people lingering around the concessions. At curtain, the theatre was less than a quarter full, which is really too bad and is a sad comment on the relative sophistication of Vancouver audiences. As a friend of mine is too fond of saying, "this is a lumberjack town: treat it like a cat treats a litter box. Do your business and leave." By leave, he means return to Europe. I disagree with him. While certainly the level of cultural refinement and development is a fraction of what one would find in a major European capital, there is enough going on that one can be very comfortable here, have world class everything, with the added bonus of clean air, clean water, and amazing scenery. Are there more barbarians here than in Europe? Perhaps, but it is possible to avoid having to interact with them. There is nothing which prevents anyone from associating exclusively with painters, poets, scientists and musicians and studiously avoiding the madding crowd of sports fans, bureaucrats, politicians and criminals. But let's talk about this work:

Sir John Tavener was commissioned by the Vancouver Chamber Choir to create this piece in recognition of the Choir's 40th year which is coming up in 2010. The work consists of a cycle of 22 poems by Jean Biès set to music for double choir, two string quartets and double bass. The two string quartets involved were the Lafayette and Borealis, who performed brilliantly. I was sitting close enough that I wondered about the instruments the Borealis quartet were playing . The rich patina caught the light in a diffused alizarin orange glow, and sure enough, the program mentions that they are all 17th and 18th century instruments from Cremona. The excellent acoustics of the Chan really brought out the decadent warmth of these instruments.

I will let Sir John describe his work:


In the Middle Ages, the title 'Miroir' designated works that reflected the traditional sciences - the science of love, the philosophical, the mystical, all indeed that is archetypal in our lives. Jean Biès is predominantly a poet, but also a perennial philosopher in the next generation on from Guènon and Schuon. I was drawn to the wonderfully rich tapestry that Biès's poetry embraces, from the mystical to the erotic, to the child-like and the playful, and to the immense profundity of his thinking.

A playful Petite ouverture 'draws back the curtain' on each sequence of the music as it moves in and out of different emotional worlds. India has always been seen by Biès as symbolic of a sacredness that has deserted the West, so this Petite ouverture is based on Indian Ragas, and should be sung in Indian style.

The cycle itself beings and ends with Promenade, 'a walk' in spring with all that 'spring' and 'walking' symbolize. After the first Promenade, we proceed into the world of erotic love, and then by way of an instrumental Interlude into a section with haiku-like miniatures. Then, following Interlude II, we reach the metaphysical and mystical centre of the piece with Androcosme, Mise en croise, and a setting of the extraordinary poem Tu ne sais pas. A third interlude takes us back through further miniatures and Interlude IV into the erotic landscape of the beginning. Thus Miroir de Poèmes is a structure, and also an inner mirror of the human condition, but seen always as a scared mirror. For Biès, as for myself all is sacred.

The music is very modern, and highly complex in many places, using such special effects as dis-phasing the choir - having one half of the choir sing something which might be a fraction of a second behind the other half - very difficult to pull off, but very effective when it is successfully executed, and the Vancouver Chamber Choir really outdid themselves in that respect. Everything was pitch perfect and crisp, and I'm looking forward to hearing the CBC rebroadcast of the concert.

The Haiku-like miniatures Sir John mentions were brilliant.

The setting of the poem Tu ne sais pas was certainly a highlight, and as I was following the work in my program, it occured to me that this poetry sounded familiar, yet up till that night I had never read anything by Jean Biès.

I'll quote the poem Apophatisme in English (the concert was sung in French) because I want to compare it with another English poem:

Gaze without eyes, word without voice.
Breath without air, a smile without lips.
Seed without sex, gesture without hands.
Scent without a flower, honey without bees.
Dark without night, sun without sky.,
Song without words, flight without wings.
A name without a person, thought without me.
Love without a heart, wine without a vineyard.
A point without space, time without duration.
End without death, beginning without end.

This all sounded really familiar, and as I was walking back to the car it occurred to me what this reminded me of:

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

It's from T.S. Elliot's The Hollow Men (here is Marlon Brando doing a reading of this poem) . I suppose that it could be argued that to move away from Western religion and start thinking of the world in a non-dualistic way requires this juxtaposition of paradoxes. It might very well be just a passing resemblance, and certainly the title of the poem, Aphothatism, (the belief that God cannot be known and can only be described by what God is not) is a clue.

Quand s' élève leur supplication, sai-Tu
que ceux qui Te supplient d'apparaître sont Toi ...?

(When their prayers rise up, do You know
that those who are praying for You to appear are ... You? )

Isn't this similar to:

Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

from The Hollow Men? I'm probably reading too much into this.

The second half of the concert was dedicated to a work by Canadian composer Peter Berring who received his BA in music from UBC, so this work has a certain terroir quality to it in terms of provenance, if not in subject matter. The work consists of a musical setting with narration of a Tolkienesque medieval Viking epic poem about the fourth century escapades of a Maiden Warrior who has to capture a magical sword guarded by ghosts. It was pleasant enough and had its moments, but it was dwarfed by the grandness of the previous work, despite the fact that it was performed wonderfully by the choir.