Choir to take audience on dramatic musical pilgrimage along Path of Miracles

On 19 September at St Patrick’s Cathedral, Melbourne chamber choir Polyphonic Voices will perform Path of Miracles—a hauntingly beautiful contemporary choral work inspired by the Camino de Santiago—bringing to culmination a demanding but hope-filled musical pilgrimage embarked on many months ago. The choir’s director, Michael Fulcher, says the journey has both inspired and deeply challenged the singers.

The extended choral work—composed by Joby Talbot 20 years ago as a commission by internationally celebrated vocal ensemble Tenebrae—has been described as ‘a pilgrimage in composition’, with each of its four movements corresponding to the four main posts along the Camino de Santiago: Roncesvalles, Burgos, León and Santiago. Drawing on a broad range of source texts, musical styles and languages, Talbot and librettist Robert Dickinson have created a work that explores the experience of pilgrimage in all its diversity.

Attracting hundreds of thousands of pilgrims each year, the Camino is arguably the most popular European pilgrimage route in Catholic tradition, a network of pilgrimage paths leading to the shrine of the apostle James in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain, traditionally considered to be St James’ final resting place.

Most choral pieces are not written as drama, but this one is—you’re participating in a drama, which happens to be a choir piece.

This will be the first time Polyphonic Voices has performed the piece. The choir was formed 12 years ago when, after a stint working internationally as an opera and choir conductor, Michael returned to Australia to take up his current position as director of music at Christ Church Anglican Church in South Yarra. A group of Melbourne-based choral singers approached him to see if he would be willing to conduct a new, singer-led chamber choir, and their collaborative, democratic approach to choral music-making resonated with him.

‘I wanted to go back into community music because I got sick of living out of a suitcase,’ he says. ‘I found opera conducting a rather lonely lifestyle. Ultimately it wasn’t for me.’

In the ‘12 very fruitful and happy years’ since then, the choir has performed an impressive range of early music and new works in venues around Australia, including collaborations with other choirs and performers.

One regular collaborator has been the Trinity College Choir, along with its music director Christopher Watson, who last year sang the part of the Evangelist in the two choirs’ coproduction of St Matthew’s Passion at Monash University. Christopher is a third-generation choral singer and also keeps busy as director of music at St Peter’s Anglican Church, Eastern Hill, and as part of the music team at St Patrick’s Cathedral. He came to Melbourne from his native England nine years ago, having previously worked as a freelance singer with Tenebrae (of which he was a founding member) and with the world-renowned Tallis Singers.

He is excited to be singing in Polyphonic Voices’ upcoming performance of Path of Miracles. It’s a work he knows intimately, having sung it many times with Tenebrae since its debut performance in 2005, which was originally scheduled to take place in London on the day the city’s underground was bombed, bringing the city to a standstill. Ten days later, at the rescheduled debut, the work’s themes of hope and perseverance in the face of adversity took on an added poignancy.

But for Christopher, perhaps the most memorable performances were when Tenebrae undertook a tour of the Camino de Santiago itself. ‘We sang it in all the four cities named in the movements, finishing with Santiago. It was extraordinary, because you’re in the places where the stories are being told.’

As Christopher explains, Path of Miracles is ‘basically a retelling of all the myths and stories about the Camino—things that have happened over the centuries. It talks about James’ voyage to Spain and his background, all the miracles that have happened, the people being robbed by baddies … It was particularly moving to do it in those spaces.’

‘There’s not much like it really,’ he says, ‘the energetic rhythms, the extraordinary harmonies, and the fact that it is in so many parts. Joby Talbot, the composer, has a pop music background, but he understands voices very well. It’s very dramatic. Most choral pieces are not written as drama, but this one is—you’re participating in a drama, which happens to be a choir piece.’

It’s not just the piece itself; it’s the way the piece interacts with the space ... Doing it in a place like St Pat’s will be extraordinary.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the opening moments of the performance. ‘At the beginning, the tenors and basses are right at the back making these Mongolian throat sounds, and it takes about two minutes for that just to coalesce into a chord. Then the sopranos and altos … come in on this extraordinary high moment. It’s very, very dramatic,’ he says.

Michael points out that the idea of tackling the piece came from the singers themselves. ‘They said, can we do Path of Miracles? A lot of them had admired it for a long time.

‘It’s not the sort of piece you could sing without a conductor,’ he says. ‘It’s very difficult. It’s written for 17 separate parts. Tenebrae, of course, being the most amazing singers, did it one voice per part. We’ve decided, on Chris’s recommendation, to do it with 24 voices. That presents some challenges, but it also helps to highlight various lines and adds a generosity of tone to the whole texture, which in St Patrick’s Cathedral will be an advantage.’

Neither Michael nor Christopher can think of a better venue in Melbourne for a performance of Path of Miracles than the Cathedral.

‘It’s not just the piece itself,’ Christopher says, ‘it’s the way the piece interacts with the space. We’ll have singers at the high altar, singers at the west door, some “invisible” [singers] walking around the building. Doing it in a place like St Pat’s will be extraordinary.’

Michael agrees, saying it is ‘the biggest and most atmospheric space we could possibly hope to sing it in. We’re doing it deliberately after dark so that there’s the mystery of the night as well. It’s an epic building—the ideal space.’

There’s no accompaniment for an hour straight ... The singers are going to feel like they don’t stop. So, to get used to that, just going on and on, is itself a kind of pilgrimage.

As well as telling the story of a pilgrimage, the performance itself will convey the sense of being on a significant journey.

‘When you work forwards through it, you have a sense of being on the pilgrimage,’ Michael says. ‘It’s quite remarkable. Certain musical ideas that Joby Talbot uses he stretches out for a long time. Even as a performer—and I’m sure the listener will feel this too—you have this sense of something that takes a long time. You get this sort of breadth, this epic nature of what it’s like to be on a very long walk.’

The rehearsals, too, can sometimes feeling like a gruelling journey. ‘Often Polyphonic Voices only rehearses for two hours, but here we need three hours with a proper break. I find myself rehearsing it almost like an orchestra, demanding an epic vocal journey from the singers,’ Michael says, noting that the concentration required is extraordinary.

The whole performance is a cappella. ‘There’s no accompaniment for an hour straight. The first movement is 20 minutes long; the last movement is 20 minutes long. The singers are going to feel like they don’t stop. So, to get used to that, just going on and on, is itself a kind of pilgrimage.’

‘It’s such an emotional journey as well,’ Christopher adds. ‘I think it’s important that the singers get used to doing it because it’s not just a physical thing, but an emotional thing as well. I’m often floored by it at the end. It’s a hell of a journey!’

Like the Camino itself, the piece takes the performers and audience through a variety of terrains and moods. ‘There are so many moments of repose and moments of energy,’ Christopher says, noting how the composer swaps them around. ‘Halfway through the last movement, there’s this extraordinary moment when you finally see the city, and then you kind of run down the hill towards it. And then, right at the end, everything just disperses. He instructs [the singers] basically to walk away, still singing, until the sound has faded away.’

There’s a large element of this pilgrimage being a thing of hope. You go through all the hardships of the walk, and you finish in this amazing city, and then you leave cleansed.

In this Jubilee Year, audiences will also find much in Path of Miracles that resonates with the Jubilee theme of hope.

‘I think there’s a large element of this pilgrimage being a thing of hope,’ Christopher says of the work. ‘You go through all the hardships of the walk, and you finish in this amazing city, and then you leave cleansed—and with slightly stronger legs probably!’

Micheal points out that the performance ends on a ‘big D-major chord’, conveying a very positive, hopeful outlook. ‘It’s not a sense of exhaustion; there’s a sense of calm elation. I think that corresponds to hope in quite a subconscious way.’

He hopes the audience ‘will get a real sense of what the emotional journey of being on the Camino is. It goes from talking about very practical things—like the dangers pilgrims faced—to deeply spiritual ideas and sounds. Even if you don’t hear every word, … my hope is that there’ll be a real emotional sense of what a pilgrimage might be about.’