Gladsome/Serene Light
Gladsome Light of the holy glory of the Immortal One— the Heavenly Father, holy and blessed— O Jesus Christ! Fourth movement of Rachmaninoff's All Night Vigil
Свете тихий, святыя славы Безсмертнаго Отца Небеснаго,
Святаго, Блаженнаго, Иисусе Христе!
Пришедше на запад солнца,
видевше свет вечерний.
Свете тихий, святыя славы достоин еси пет быти гласы преподобными,
Свете тихий, святыя славы достоин еси во вся времена,
Сыне Божий, живот даяй:
темже мир Тя славит.
Поем Отца, Сына и Святаго Духа, Бога. (Wikisource)
Gladsome Light of the holy glory of the Immortal One—
the Heavenly Father, holy and blessed—
O Jesus Christ!
Now that we have come to the setting of the sun,
and behold the light of evening,
we praise the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—God.
Thou art worthy at every moment
to be praised in hymns by reverent voices.
O Son of God, Thou art the Giver of Life;
therefore all the world glorifies Thee. (Translation of All Night Vigil text)
After my morning meditation, I generally put on my playlist of classical music from YouTube, currently a little over 100 songs. Often I begin with this one.
Or this, more commonly known as the Nunc Dimittis or Now Let Thy Servant Depart:
It is truly a serene way to begin the day.
I am not sure I can explain my relationship to Rachmaninoff’s All Night Vigil, unless you are an obsessed choral singer or perhaps a fan of it yourself.
I first began singing with francophone concert choirs in Montreal around 2003. At first the choir I was part of was a dear group of enthusiastic amateurs which seemed to go through a lot of different choir directors.
At a certain point, I guess late 2004, they acquired Martin Dagenais, who was also directing a higher level chamber choir of amateurs called Melodium. I went to hear them perform the Part Magnificat and the Bach one, and fell in love.
How ardently I desired to sing with them!
Was I good enough though?
I agonized for a while, and then timidly approached Martin after a choir rehearsal. He told me they were working on the Rachmaninoff All Night Vigil, and I could come see how it went.
Though I have done individual voice lessons, and sung with over a dozen different concert choirs over the past 23 ish years (or high level church choir, as the Cathedral choir isn’t a concert choir per se but certainly is at a higher level than some of the concert choirs I have been a part of), singing with Melodium was my key formative experience, both because it was early in my history and also Martin had a gift for bringing out the interpretation he desired from us and did not shy from critiquing us individually so we could improve.
Our choir scores were covered with words which might seem random to a casual observer - “soleil” is one I remember specially, when he wanted a bright, warm sound. He was fond of repeating a saying he had learned from one of his early music teachers, “Pas de crayon, pas de carriere!” There were always pencils lying around in the practice room for anyone so forgetful as to not bring one, though, as he demanded we write everything down as if it were revelation… well, in a way it was.
Martin loved this particular version of the All Night Vigil by The Robert Shaw Festival Singers because of the purity of the vowels of Shaw’s singers, so we came to adore it too. I must have listened to it over a hundred times in preparation for the concert, and because I have a good memory, was able to memorize all 15 movements in Old Slavonia phonetically with the correct pitch and time per note so I could watch Martin carefully for the dynamics and feeling he wanted.
Since then, I have listened to this work countless hundredss of times, at times singing it through from beginning to end to console myself. I performed it a second time in Oakville with Masterworks in 2012.
So you see, gentle reader, I gradually fell as deeply in love with the work as I am now by this process of spending thousands of hours in its thrall.
Isn’t that what it is to learn to love anything, anyone?
In a Reddit comment on the famous quote “tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner” someone wrote: “On a tendance à justifier nos jugements et critiques envers les autres en séparant les choses en “nous et eux”. Comprendre tout, c’est reconnaître qu’il n’y a pas de séparation entre ces choses, c’est une seule et même chose.”
And so we circle back to the nondual. Not two.
