I always try to be as thoughtful as possible and go as deep as I can into the subject that I am writing about
THE BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE INTERVIEW
Eric Whitacre
It’s not really the done thing to go into fan mode during an interview. You’re there to do a job, so keep it professional – no autograph requests, no selfies. On this occasion, however, I’m going to make an exception. Midlife Choirsis, the choir I sing with in Cheltenham, has been learning one of Eric Whitacre’s pieces. Would he be kind enough to film a quick message for them? ‘Hey gang! Eric Whitacre here!’ he beams into my phone. ‘Midlife Choirsis – that’s the best name I’ve ever heard! Thank you all so much for performing Seal Lullaby…’ Why do I get the feeling he might have done this sort of thing once or twice before?
Conveniently, Seal Lullaby is on Home, Voces8’s new album of Whitacre’s music, about which we’ve to come to have a chat at Universal’s offices in Kings Cross. However, while the Lullaby is indeed a classic example of the short, dreamy pieces that have made the 53-year-old Nevada-born composer the toast of countless choirs and listeners across the globe, there is a much weightier affair that I want to ask him about. Taking the lion’s share of the same disc is The Sacred Veil, a 50-minute work for voices, cello and piano. By far the longest piece he has ever written, it also relives a time of sorrow.
‘In my entire career as a composer, The Sacred Veil was a singular experience,’ he tells me. ‘I always try to be as thoughtful as possible and go as deep as I can into the text and the subject I am writing about – I have an actor friend who always calls me a “method composer” because I have to live something to write about it. However, nothing was quite like writing The Sacred Veil. The parts I found most difficult to set were Julie’s own words. I hadn’t realised what a good writer she was, and was wholly unprepared for the amount of emotion inside those words. There were times when I was openly weeping at my desk.’
The Julie in question is Julia Lawrence Silvestri, a close friend who died from ovarian cancer in 2005 at just 35. She was the wife of the author and poet Charles Anthony (Tony) Silvestri, a pal of Whitacre’s since their days in the choir at the University Of Nevada and now a regular writing partner. Visiting Whitacre in Los Angeles after Julie died, Tony left ‘The Veil Opens’, a poem he had written about birth, death and eternity, lying on the composer’s piano – not entirely by accident, one suspects. Whitacre read it, and the mental cogs started to whirr.
He and Tony then slowly, painstakingly pu
