Transfigurations

Charles Anthony Silvestri (E)

'Transfigurations' is a choral setting of a suite of poems by celebrated poet Charles Anthony Silvestri, centered around the idea of change. It's our first collaboration, and it was inspired by the musings of its commissioner, Dan Peterson.

Early in the process, Tony and I hashed out various ideas for the suite, all connected by the idea of transformation from one shape to another. Two of the poems were grounded in religion and mythology, such as the Transfiguration of Christ; or the story of Iphis from Ovid's Metamorphoses, which tells of a young girl who prays to be transformed into a man so that she may wed her female lover. Others are rooted in the works of other great poets, such as 'Ozymandias', a reimagining of Percy Bysshe Shelley's famous sonnet about a collapsed empire. Still others embrace a more metaphysical exploration of the universe, such as the opening pair of movements ‘Fire Prelude' and 'Photon', that rhapsodize on the harmonious connection between the stars and our own selves. And as a mirror to those opening poems, the concluding movement 'Tat Tvam Asi' (Sanskrit for “Thou art that”) explores the famous phrase in Hinduism that states that the individual is the Absolute--that each of us is in fact the very universe itself.

© Christopher Tin 2025