mariaricciobryce.com
The Journey to the requiem
I have had a “church gig”’ almost all of my life. I honestly can’t remember a Sunday morning when I wasn’t sitting on an organ bench somewhere, providing music for the weekly ritual of churchgoing.
I enjoyed the experience of playing in the various churches, and I was always grateful for the work...but at the end of each weekly service, I would head back home and forget about it, until the next Sunday.
That changed forever when I applied, almost unwillingly, for the position of Music Director at St
Luke’s Roman Catholic Church in Schenectady, NY. My mother had spotted an ad in the
Catholic newspaper, “The Evangelist,” for the position at St. Luke’s, and urged me to apply for
it.
This was a rarity for my mother! Typically, she never told me what to do. Her excited
insistence caused me to follow through.
I called St Luke’s, and spoke to the Pastor, Father Dominic Isopo. We scheduled an interview,
and arranged to meet at the side door of the church on a wintry Saturday afternoon.
We shook hands, and then Father Isopo unlocked the door, and led me inside.
The church was in semi -darkness, laid bare. I felt, rather than saw, the depth of the actual
space. I perceived the empty pews, the windows, the long aisles wending their way to the
back of the church, and the imposing rafters high above us, seeming to extend almost to the
heavens....
In the silence of what turned out to be a pivotal moment of my life , I suddenly heard, from
deep inside me, a murmur of hushed, but undeniable, holiness, as my forgotten faith
whispered to me, in a mysterious but unmistakeable sequence of true, most earnest hope.
In short, I felt a calling.
I have now been the Music Director at St. Luke’s for over 25 years... and I will always be
grateful to my mother for this gift.
Throughout my time there, from my vantage point up in the organ loft, high above the pews
below, I have been privy to some of the most salient and compelling experiences of our lives
—and, as Music Director, I have provided the music for them.
For so many of the defining moments of our shared existence, I am there: for the beautiful,
beloved Christmas Eves, and for the triumphant Easter mornings....for the deliriously
celebratory weddings, and the life-affirming Christenings....
And for the funerals— for those, too! —I am also there: for the mourners who stand upright,
full of quiet gratitude for long lives, well-lived .... and for those, bent so low in their
sorrow...for those shattered by devastating, disfiguring loss.
For each of them, I sing the
ancient, timeless chant ‘Requiem Aeternam,’ as the priest walks down the aisle to meet the
bereaved beside the caskets of their loved ones. Through it all, I have felt the quiet indestructibility of the faith that permeates our moments of joy or woe—— the faith that, by turns, is desperately sought; fiercely, furiously questioned; and steadfastly, triumphantly upheld, in awe and in thanksgiving.
This extraordinary experience in my life, both as a musician and as a human being, is what inspired me to create my Requiem. I urgently felt the need to share what I have learned. I have seen such loss and anguish, but I have witnessed, again and again, the Invincibility of Love— no matter what cruel blows of Fate, or unimaginable bad luck, assail us.
Whether you sing in a performance of my Requiem, or whether you listen, please know that the notes and words on the pages that you hold in your hands, or that you experience in an audience, or alone in your home, were born from what I felt was my responsibility, and my honor, to give voice to.
I hope so much that you will hear, and be upheld by, the radiant, unending streams of love defying the darkness, wherever you are in your life’s journey... and that my Requiem may provide you with cadences of profound consolation, hope, and peace.
