Light and darkness: the perfect contrast. There is no dichotomy more powerful in human consciousness. It has been entrenched in our biology by billions of years of natural selection. We value the light because it warms us, provides food for us, protects us from the unknown dangers of darkness. This evolutionary adaptation holds a prominent niche both in our instinctual behavior and our more complex psychology. In art and religion, countless cultures represent light as the epitome of good, the source and sustainer of vitality. Those who control the light, even symbolically, have power over us on a very basic biological and psychological level.
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I file into the Chapel and take my seat in the first empty pew I can find, next to the middle aisle, about 2/3 of the way to the back. Though more than a thousand people crowd the chamber, and the acoustics should magnify even a whisper, it is much quieter than seems natural.
It is also much darker than I expected. The twilight softens everything around me, blurring the church’s corners, melting the shine of gold and silver. In the gloom the high ceilings and stretching stained glass windows are obscured by shadow. There are no electric lights; the only respite from darkness are the candles on the distant altar.
As if on cue, the modest murmur fades away, like a slowing wind that no longer rustles the leaves, fading to silence. The chapel seems grows darker. I can barely see, and I can’t hear anything except the occasional cough. We, the penitent, have lost our speech along with the light. For ten long minutes we sit this way and I count how many times someone clears their throat. They come in spurts, with long stretches of absolute silence punctuated by 3-4 hacks in quick succession. I count to 73. Ten years ago I would have been squirming with discomfort, but now this heavy fog holds me immobile, sinking into the creases of my brain and arresting my thoughts. My heartbeat is slow.
Advent is the preparation for the coming of Jesus Christ, son of God, light of the world. The ceremony is a recognition of the humanity’s fall from grace, and a foreshadowing of the salvation that arrives on December 25. The dim noiselessness symbolizes the first point on many different levels. Sin. Death. Preparation for birth. The rigid lack of visual contrast taps into our deepest perceptual connotations of lifelessness.
…
A high, clear note shatters the stillness. A boy’s voice radiates from behind us and echoes between the vaults, magnifying itself as it bounces from wall to wall. We the penitent breathe in together, gasping like drowning men at the pure music that we had forgotten existed. A single note, a solitary breath, and then light explodes from the rear of the church, pushing my back straight and my head up and HERE is the Chapel in all its glory. 500+ years of English stone gleams before me. The massive windows sparkle with ruby, sapphire, and emerald.
I feel warmth over my left shoulder, so I turn to look. In the aisle stand fourteen boys somewhere between the ages of 10 and 14: the world famous King’s Chapel Choir. They are dressed in white robes, and the lead boy carries a fixture with a dozen lit candles, the source of the warmth and illumination. Behind him, another boy carries the cross.
The boy in front is the singing one. His voice is clear, strong, and pure. Without the slightest hint of a mistaken-pitch-masking vibrato, he sings a simple, flawless melody, a chanting Latin call to worship. The service is a processional one; the choir and the clergy slowly walk from the rear of the chapel to the front. They move slowly, shuffling in perfect unison like a half-speed military parade to the beat of the front boy’s monastic rhythm. I find it strange that he is still the only one singing, leading this mostly silent group past me.
The candles move with the boys. Always forward, but with a slight up/down oscillation at each step. The bouncing motion makes disproportionately long and irregular shadows ebb and flow on the walls, and I begin notice little things about the stone. On the right-hand wall, a small statue is partially eclipsed by the shadow of a ledge. When the candle-holder steps, it becomes visible for a split second: a cheeky little cherub playing “peek-a-boo” with me.
The choir stops walking in the middle of the aisle, and there is expectation emanating from the men and women around me. A leg is bouncing next to me, the owner’s jaw muscle is rapidly twitching with what I think is anticipation. The lead boy holds the last note of his incantation and then abruptly falls mute. The echoes persist for what seems like hours. Then silence.
There was no conductor, and I didn’t see any overt cues, but there must have been a signal because a chord erupted from those boys and it nearly blew me backwards. Whereas the original incantation drove away the darkness, this music baked the warmth and the light into us, the penitent. As the baritones followed the entrance of the tenors, light seemed to shine deeper, become more complex, mirroring the growing intricacy of the music. Full, deep harmony reverberated around the church, self-sustaining and nearly tangible. Melody and Counterpoint danced together, transferring the lead seamlessly. Melody spun and shimmered and then beckoned to Counterpoint, who gracefully twisted from floor to ceiling. The statues reached their stone fingers to rising Counterpoint, who met the vaults and spilled sideways along their contours, coating the walls and flowing down back towards us; dripping thick musical ambrosia on our ears. The dance continued; notes building off of and complementing each other like flavors in a gourmet meal. Listening to this musical feast was a massage for my brain, a slow pulse of pleasure moving from one cortex to another.
I was elevated, innervated with aesthetic, and the whole time I imagined what it would feel like right now if I believed it all, if I could connect the symbols, the music, and the light to the beauty of a God in heaven. Would I feel a presence? Would I hear the Holy Spirit whisper in my ear with the language of Mozart, or catch a glimpse of God’s face in the shimmering candles?
The service goes on, with the choir moving from section to section. I begin to come down from my high as the last reading concludes. "Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. "
After the Latin benediction, we rise and walk towards the doors. Strangely, the exit music is a dark, brooding nocturne, discordant and jarring, out of place with most of the service. The chapel returns to its contemplative origin and shadows resume their places in the cracks and corners. I turn back and say good-bye as if to a childhood friend, because over the last 500+ years we the penitent have made the Chapel into a living, breathing force. We have given it life, and in the process imbued it with power over us. Five hundred and 60 years ago, stonemasons laid the foundation and built the King’s Chapel from the ground up. Architects imagined the sound waves bouncing from wall to wall, echoing from the ribbed vaults to the floor and back again. Today, the King’s Chapel stands alone, it’s creators long dead. It enfolds us, the penitent, in its shadows and breathes life into us with light; the living, incarnate power of metaphor.
