2016: Estonia, Finland, Russia

I thought I was going to hate everyone.

That’s generally the way it goes when you go on a large group trip: lots of people with varied personalities, stuck together for two weeks of highly structured, nay, exhausting travel. But this study tour was different. Our group’s “stuck-togetherness” ebbed and flowed as the sights seen and sounds heard continued to refresh and inspire us all. For performances and presentations we gathered as one mass, absorbing and learning from our ever-changing Baltic environment. But we also had many opportunities to explore freely on our own. Together, this variety made for a very successful trip, allowing for many sublime encounters.

One of the most celestial of these encounters took place through the dense soporific fog of jet lag on the first night. Inside Tallinn’s world-famous 13th-century St. Nicholas’ Church we sat together in old wooden pews, awaiting Vox Clamantis. At the front end of the nave stood a forest of microphones and recording equipment. The concert would be broadcast live over Estonian public radio. Despite the modern technology, we were still enveloped by an otherwise medieval space. Unlike the elaborate massive cathedrals seen elsewhere throughout Europe, this church was modest and simple. Roughly cut blocks of stone and white paint towered above us. Before us, at the apse, stood a stunning gilt 15th-century high altar, open wide to share in elaborate detail grotesque martyrdoms. As one interested most in the visual arts, I had the urge to get up and take a closer look, to study the intricacies of each panel and discern a larger narrative. But the microphones and the soon-to-begin performance held me in my seat. We didn’t wait long. Soon, angelic soprano and alto voices softly pierced through the audience’s quiet murmuring. The sound of singing began to grow steadily louder and discernibly closer. Up both side aisles slowly marched Vox Clamantis, pouring out their arresting choral harmonies as they arrived at the spot where the transept meets the nave. The following hour felt like a dream, and not only because the whole of the ISM was constantly a knife’s edge away from sleep. Vox Clamantis’s performance was nothing short of soul-grabbing.

Our tour of churches around the Finnish town of Espoo outside Helsinki, proved to be another stunning encounter for our group. We began our morning at what appeared from the outside to be a humble Orthodox chapel. This belied its contents. Immediately upon entering the church, we were greeted with an overwhelming visual cacophony. Boisterously colored icons filled every square inch of the small church’s walls. A close friend of mine came up to me to say with beautiful frustration, “I don’t know how to take a picture of this!” Of course, it was impossible to capture the image-laden walls sufficiently, let alone the feeling of being overwhelmed by so many color-rich depictions. Walking under and around these images seemed like pacing within a sacred comic book. The church was designed by Father Paul Hesse and dedicated to St. Herman of Alaska, a saint I had never heard of, but one nevertheless important to the complex story of Russian Orthodoxy’s spread.

A mere ten-minute walk away from St. Herman’s stood Tapiola Church, a structure that appeared to be the polar opposite: a bit larger, and Lutheran, but more importantly, an exemplar of early Finnish Modernism. Tapiola is box-like, vast, and constructed of simple and obvious materials of somber earth-tones. This church felt nothing like the last, and the contrast was delicious. Architect Aaron Ruusuvuori’s design reminded me immediately of another more familiar building: the Yale University Art Gallery’s Louis Kahn building. Of course, this made sense. Louis Kahn’s building is Modernist, filled with angular geometry, and composed of natural and obvious materials. Not least, Kahn himself was born in Estonia.

Such dramatic shifts in our encounters became emblematic of the trip. But perhaps the best shifting was the regular move between structured group events and time for individual exploration. This made for a more holistically complete study tour, allowing us space to thrive and enjoy learning as we do best. For me, this became most apparent in my own exploration of Helsinki’s Kiasma, the city’s home museum for contemporary art. We all had the option of visiting the site with a small group on a guided tour. I opted instead for a solo visit, and it was well worth it. The museum was small; in an hour and a half, I was able to see virtually everything I hoped to see. The works on view were fun, interesting, engaging, playful, and meaningful––created by a slew of artists from Finland and beyond. Ernesto Neto’s and Choi Jeong Hwa’s respective exhibitions were particularly enjoyable in their invitation for interaction. By exploring on my own, I felt refreshed and energized.

All of these experiences, and many others not mentioned here, made for a remarkable study tour—one that left me pining for a quick return.

And as you may have guessed, I left not hating everyone.

Hidden in the Open

A fascination with the historical seems to be a common trait in organists. Yet we often only focus on the mechanical curiosity of the instrument itself, which has undergone dizzying evolution in the centuries since its invention. Accordingly, organs are kaleidoscopically varied in the sound-worlds they create. In the pursuit of the sound-worlds that we organists love—and want our listeners to love—we cannot help but get bogged down in pipe scales, temperaments, this flute stop or that flute stop. But from time to time, it’s important to step back from minutiae and think about the contexts and larger histories of the instruments we know and love. For me, studying at the ISM, and especially this year’s study tour to the Baltics, encouraged me to consider this wider perspective. The best moments of my first year at Yale felt like an electrical surge in my brain, where a poem from this course suddenly connects to a new definition of “the voice” in that course, and then to a lecturer’s ideas on icons during the ISM Colloquium, and then to a perplexing section of organ music in the practice room. And the study trip, too, was ripe with these moments, as I trekked between Tallinn’s different cathedrals, or went from a talk by a Russian Orthodox priest to a conversation with undergraduates at a Russian university.

One connection in particular that struck me on the study tour was that all manner of sacred buildings and objects persisted through the Soviet occupation of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, as if they’d actually been hidden in plain sight. Some churches survived only as shells – the Feodorovskaya Cathedral in Saint Petersburg was gutted and pierced with ducts and lines to function as a milk processing plant, and the Cathedral of Simeon and Hanna in Tallinn was used as a sports hall, its tower removed. But the sacredness of these buildings remained, somehow, and after the Soviet Era these places were not only restored, but made more beautiful than before. One could more appropriately say, then, that the core of these churches survived, not just an empty shell. A sacred core, hidden behind the mask of a milk plant or sports hall. For example, the 1776 Casparini organ, in the Church of the Holy Spirit in Vilnius, is also a core, with only five ranks of pipes currently installed and playable. The many remaining pipes are stacked on shelves in a back room, following a collaborative project that resulted in a reproduction of the instrument being built at the Eastman School of Music. Back in Vilnius, the slow, expensive process of renovating the case and mechanism plods on for years. But that core of pipes is extraordinarily beautiful. We organ students spent a surprisingly long time enjoying the sounds of just these few, basic ranks, which might only be thought of as part of the principal chorus on a less-distinguished instrument. I feel certain that, as with the churches, the Casparini’s core will continue to inspire the restoration of the entire instrument.

With images of drab neo-Classical and Brutalist Soviet architecture looming in my mind, I had also not expected to see so many old and beautifully ornate churches on our trip. It seems as though each church has its own complex story for having survived the Soviet occupations, sometimes just the dumb luck of not being seized by the government for another purpose. The Lutheran St. Mary’s Cathedral in Tallinn is the oldest church in mainland Estonia and still has its 17th century pews, pulpit, and altar. The Church of the Holy Spirit in Vilnius—where the Casparini organ lives—has an unbelievable mid-18th century Baroque interior, with wild feathers and branches formed of wood and plaster. In Tytuvėnai, a small town between Vilnius and Riga, the organist sub-group (eight ISM organ students and Prof. Martin Jean) were fortunate to spend a generous amount of time in the 17th-century Church of Our Lady of the Angels, part of a Bernardine monastery. Here was another church with an incredible interior that has survived many social and political upheavals, and its beautiful 1789 organ survived them as well. The organ was built by a Lithuanian, Nicolaus Jantzon, and gave us an opportunity to experience a much fuller late 18th-century sound-world than that of the Casparini. Because the organ lacks a pedal board, we played several pieces with a second person supplying the pedal line, a tricky bit of fun.

It wasn’t just the sound of the Tytuvėnai organ that was beautiful, but the whole of it: the peeling stop labels, the wooden statue of David and his lyre with a few broken strings, the hand-copied part books for the Mass stacked behind the organ case. It was a counterpoint to museums and alarmed glass cases, multi-lingual pamphlets and tour guides. Those things have their sacred qualities; we make a pilgrimage to see great works of art (and we all did, at the Hermitage), and we stand in the crowd and look to connect. But on this trip, it was a blessing to find the sacred cores and sacred wholes that have truly weathered storms of all descriptions.

Fabric of the Sacred

I have been a singer in the ISM’s Voxtet for the past two years. This program focuses on early music, art song,  and sacred music, though many of us also sing opera. Sacred music transports the performer and the listener into another realm of reality, the heavenly plane of existence.

Our study trip to the Baltics started in Tallinn, Estonia where we heard an amazing Estonian group called Vox Clamantis give a concert of sacred music. A familiar Christian chant opened the program, exquisitely soft and nuanced, and paired with incredibly precise intonation throughout the performance. This night was an introduction to the power of music to communicate the celestial, and a highlight of the time we spent in Estonia.

As our tour progressed, we visited Orthodox and Lutheran churches in Tallinn, Helsinki, and Saint Petersburg and heard presentations by people who worked at each church or knew a lot of history about each space. We attended a few Orthodox services in which music was a key component. Orthodox services also require the participants to stand throughout the service, and I marveled at the older women who were able to stand for a “short” 90-minute Vespers service, kissing icons, bowing with reverence every few minutes, and crossing themselves frequently. This was a reminder that music and art are never created in a bubble but are informed by history, belief/religion, politics, and culture. All of these things are wrapped up into each other and it takes time, patience, and curiosity to see and understand the connections.

Architecture is part of the constellation of components that make up the experience of the sacred. Tallinn was quaint and charming in character, but Saint Petersburg was a massive, architectural wonder. In this Russian city we experienced St. Isaac’s Cathedral, colorful mosaics in the Church of the Spilled Blood, and most noticeably an abundance of gold in and on each church and national building. The style of singing, too, resembles this uniquely ornate, grander aesthetic, offering its own flavor of delight and comfort to the listener. We walked into Kazaan Cathedral as a service was taking place—a complex musical dialogue between the priest and the choir resonated with the open, ornate, gold-adorned space to transport the listener to a different world.

Another particularly memorable example of Russian singing was a short, impromptu performance by a group of five or six men at the Fortress of St. Peter and Paul. As singers working for the Russian Orthodox Church, they asked us to not record, photograph, or applaud, out of reverence. After the leader (a marvelous bass) showed off his three-octave range in wonderful a cappella number, as the audience murmured its approbation he confidently proclaimed with a heavy accent, “This is why in  Russian Church we do not need organ.” (He was right.) We also heard four voice students and an instructor from the University of Saint Petersburg give a lecture/concert on Russian chant dating back to the 9th century. Instead of singing in unison in the compact, Gregorian chant style to which we are accustomed, they demonstrated a progression of Russian chant of individual melodic lines combining contrapuntally in a voice-leading maze, leading to incredible dissonances and expansive polychord endings.

Following the study tour, Yale Schola Cantorum sang three concerts of Arvo Pärt’s Passio, which tells the Passion story from the gospel of John. The piece itself, composed in Part’s signature minimalist style, masterfully uses harmonic tension to create wonder, reflection, anger, dismay, and hope. A highlight for me was singing this for the composer himself and seeing how happy and gracious he was to the performers during the rehearsal, before the performance, and afterwards.

For the Voxtet excursion, music was the main object of our journey. We traveled to Munich, Germany to visit our teacher’s old stomping grounds and sang in several churches and chapels. A particular piece we sang sticks with me: Orlando di Lassus’s “In monte Oliveti” which describes Jesus’s prayer and agony on the Mount of Olives just before Judas’s betrayal.

Even though it is a singer’s tendency to focus on the imperfection of any performance, I know that singing in these sacred spaces touched everyone who listened, as was evident by the responses of our audiences. In addition to enjoying the famous Hofbräuhaus, the Voxtet also put on a Liederabend with fortepianist Christoph Hammer. Singing lieder accompanied by the same instruments Schubert, Mozart, and Beethoven would have played on was a real treat and enriched my understanding of singing.

After almost a month on the road, what can I say about the ISM Study Tour? I am beyond amazed at the experience of visiting these places and experiencing a slice of the vast culture associated with each country. Incredible music, countless masterworks of art, and architectural wonders all flood my mind and soul. It is music that brought me to Yale, but this trip helped me to understand that music is simply one of the beautiful threads that make up the fabric of the sacred.

Travel On

Travel on, travel on, there’s a spirit that is playing, the spirit plays like music every day. Travel on, travel on, with the music that is playing. The spirit will be with us all the way

-Sydney Carter

I felt the spirit of encounter traveling with us throughout this year’s ISM Study Tour to Tallinn, Helsinki and Saint Petersburg. We were offered warm welcomes by many on our trip, both encountering some familiar faces from this year’s Colloquium series and making new introductions. In Tallinn, we met Father Mattias Palli at the Church of St. Simeon and the Prophetess Hanna (Estonian Orthodox). In Helsinki, we attended the St. Thomas Mass at Mikael Agricola Church (Evangelical Lutheran) and met afterward with the Reverend Pirjo Kantala and Mrs. Inna Vintturi. And in Saint Petersburg, we had the opportunity to meet with Father Alexander Sorokin at the Cathedral of the Icon of the Mother of God Feodorovskaya (Russian Orthodox), engaging in a fascinating discussion about the history, present experience, and future of religious life in the Russian Federation. For me, these were all experiences that ran much deeper than sightseeing and museums—they were authentic encounters with faithful people that allowed me a glimpse into their lives and worlds.

In Tallinn we heard the personal witness of Fr. Palli who grew up a self-described nonbeliever and was baptized in 1985. I was fascinated by the question “what is the Estonian Church?” Throughout its history, Estonia has been a liminal border space between Catholic Poland, Lutheran Germany, and Orthodox Russia. What, then, is the Estonian religious identity? It did, from my perspective, seem to be marked by a certain amount of ecumenical cooperation. For example, Fr. Palli referenced joint statements between the Estonian Orthodox and Evangelical Lutheran churches. He told us about the rich history of religious life in Estonia, as well as the history of the Church of Simeon and Hanna, which was originally constructed by Russian sailors in the mid-1700s and underwent a major restoration from 1999 to 2007.

In Helsinki, we were fortunate to be able to attend the St. Thomas Mass (Tuomasmessu in Finnish), a service that takes place weekly on Sunday evenings at the Mikael Agricola Church. An ecumenical service that invites “doubters and seekers to celebrate, worship God, serve their neighbor, and grow together … named after the Apostle Thomas, who seemed to have more questions than answers in his faith,” it began in that space in 1988 and has now spread to churches through Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Germany. The service follows the liturgical tradition of the Western Mass, yet it has been infused with the spirit of present-day ecumenism. Amazingly, each service is planned by a team of 50 to 70 people, all of whom are volunteers.

There can be up to 20 songs performed in a single St. Thomas Mass. One of the songs which opened the worship we attended was “Travel On” (Matkaa Tee), quoted at the beginning of this reflection, by Sydney Carter and Anna-Mari Kaskinen. The band leader and accompanist arrange these songs every week, including a variety of traditional hymnody, Finnish folk hymns, contemporary music, and everything in between. The structure of the mass is, in most ways, very traditional, but there is great freedom within this structure for the prayers, music, and other components (healing stations, prayer stations, etc.) to reflect the needs of the specific community. In addition to the physical presence, we learned that around 2,000 people listen to the service on the radio, 300 to the live stream, and many more watch services on YouTube.

For me, this service was an oasis of calm amidst a busy trip. About halfway through our journey, it provided me the opportunity to rest, reflect, pray, and build community. After the service, we were invited to a wonderful reception hosted by St. Thomas Mass participants in the fellowship hall of the church. There, I was able to make new friends and learn from them what it was that kept them coming back to this service. This time for encounter was a gift that deepened our experience far beyond mere tourism, enabling us to connect and converse with those whom had so warmly welcomed us into their worship.

Throughout all of these encounters and more, what inspired me was the willingness of our hosts to welcome us into their sacred places and to share with us their stories, worship, music, and art. For me, this was what our study tour was about—a spirit of curiosity, exploration, and encounter. I thank God for this Spirit-filled travel.

Just before we left for the Baltics, I joked that the only Estonian, Finnish, Russian, and Latvian words I needed to learn were “coffee” and “thanks.” Even after a year of preparation, the region felt so foreign to me that I planned to cling to what I knew was universal—coffee (kohv/kahvi/кофе/kafija) and gratitude for it. Though I expected to find beauty in Baltic choirs, Finnish forests, church grandeur, and wonderful classmates, I realize now that our journey was defined, for me, by the many unexpected moments of beauty and the unbridled joy they brought.

Estonia

There was something absolutely trance-like about stumbling off the plane, off the bus, into and out of the hotel, and onto the cobblestone streets of one of the most idyllic cities any of us had seen. The vibrant color palette, preserved medieval towers and churches, and blooming foliage of Tallinn Old Town were only amplified by warm sunshine and a perfect blue sky. Despite our sleepless delirium, we were in love. Within minutes we found kohv, ice cream (the other universal), very large pancakes, and pickled herring.

Even before the Vox Clamantis concert that night, Tallinn felt like home. This sensation grew stronger over the next four days as we spent our free time wandering through Old Town—unintentionally retracing our steps over and over again—and basking in its loveliness.

Our first major excursion outside of Old Town was to Seaplane Harbour, a museum right on the Baltic Sea. Submarines, flight simulators, remote-control boats, and costumes transformed us into giddy schoolchildren as we immersed ourselves in maritime magic.

As if the exuberance of Seaplane Harbour weren’t beautiful enough, we then found a tiny restaurant in the middle of a residential area where we were shown immense kindness and fed a tomato soup so delicious that it bordered on divine. The simplest lunch reminded us of the power of food to become a physical manifestation of hospitality and comfort.

Finland

Our hearts ached as we left Tallinn for Helsinki, but awe quickly supplanted grief when we filed onto the colossal boat. I’ll never forget feeling the spray of the Baltic Sea while standing on the deck of a ferry the size of a cruise ship. Throughout our Baltic voyage, I couldn’t help but marvel at the effects of being on or near water at all times; a calm happiness washed over us as we succumbed to the majesty of the sea.

While in Finland we continued to revel in nature, finding our own sanctuaries in forests, on islands, and on sunny benches by the harbor. The woods and lakes of Haltia nature center and the cliffs and greenness of the island fortress of Suomenlinna left me blissfully breathless, frolicking through meadows of tall grass and tiny flowers.

Though many of us expected to love the tour’s nature days, I’m not sure any of us expected to find such community with each other in the saunas. We’d giggled all year about the prospect of sitting in the steam with classmates we hardly knew, about the sport of “Competitive Sauna,” and about the possibility of a professor walking in (which was quickly quelled by Martin Jean’s declaration of “student-only saunas”). One of my fondest memories of the tour, though, is of the tiny sauna at Haltia filled with nearly 20 classmates in swimsuits squished against each other, laughing and bonding over our collective sweat and euphoric discomfort.

Russia

It’s curious that the choral conductor has hardly mentioned the slew of choral music heard on this journey. Though all the ensembles we heard in concerts, lectures, and church services were fabulous and fantastically interesting, my favorite performance of the tour was a complete surprise. After waiting in line for nearly an hour, we walked into the Hermitage in our tour groups, fighting through thick crowds to catch a glimpse of its treasures. We made our way into a huge open room, meant to be more of a passageway than an attraction in itself. Within a few seconds, four male voices began to sing together, their depth and warmth surrounding us, chilling our spines, and bringing tears to our eyes. Theirs was one of the most incredible sounds I have ever heard.

Schola Cantorum Tour

With the arrival of the non-ISM Schola singers at the closing dinner, study tour transformed into performance tour. One of the Seto singers told us in Estonia: “Our goal is not to go from one stage to another, but just to enjoy.” I had been so struck by their sense of community and the integrity of their mission, and this quote stuck with me for the entirety of Schola tour. With the Seto women in mind, I allowed myself to enjoy all my last moments singing and being with people who have become my family these past two years: the feeling of a huge choral breath before an important entrance, the cathartic Amen at the end of the Pärt Passio, the face David Hill makes when we’re out of tune, communal meals, nights spent piled into a hotel room bed watching television together, the hilarity(!) of a 2:30 am departure time on a performance day, Arvo Pärt blowing Nola Richardson a kiss at our soundcheck in Estonia as he heard her sing solo for the first time, dancing in Latvia, and tearful goodbyes.  Kristel Üksvärav

I left Riga feeling full, changed, excited, grateful, and already homesick for the overwhelming Baltic beauty that captivated me from my first moments in Tallinn. The next Estonian Song Festival is in 2019… see you there!