for the sake of your journey

$2.00/copy | Peruse | Purchase |

Ossuaries - buildings, chests or sites where the bones of the deceased are stored - are largely rooted in Baroque-era practices, and there are roughly 40 of them scattered across Europe.  The rarest and most beguiling form of ossuary is the “bone church,” in which the remains are integrated into the structure of the building. There are six “bone churches” throughout Europe.  Though the origin story of each is unique, the consensus among all those who oversaw their creation is the same: life is short.

Évora, Portugal, is home to one of them: the Capela dos Ossos (Chapel of Bones). In the mid-17th century, several villages in the area were in need of additional land to build on, and the monastic cemeteries were their only option. As a result, approximately 5,000 bodies were exhumed from their resting places.  In efforts to treat the remains with the utmost respect, it was decided they would be displayed by building them into a chapel, next to the Church of St. Francis. 

During a choral tour with the St. Charles Singers, I visited the Capela dos Ossos in the summer of 2023.  Several inscriptions can be found inside the chapel, including this poem by a parish priest, Padre António da Ascenção. Our tour guide read this poem to us before we arrived in Évora, but reading it inside the chapel, surrounded by all of what was left of these people, was a sobering experience.  I knew immediately that I wanted to set this poetry, but felt I needed to live with these words for a while before I could be ready to treat them properly.

Above all else, this poem urges its readers to stop and reflect.  To emulate this intentional frame of mind, the melodic lines are set with “mirrored” inversions of inner voices (internal reflection), followed by inversion of the outer voices (external reflection). Phrases are extended with measures of 5/4 time. Savor the moments of silence and stillness in the score. 

The longer you pause, the further on your journey you will be.

This work will premiere in July 2024 by WithOneVoice, and again in October 2024 by the St. Charles Singers.