The Concept of the “Kyrie”

The choir to which I belong, the Cherry Creek Chorale, is privileged to include a composer, Gloria Srikijkarn, whose works we have performed at several concerts. For our October 2022 concert Songs of Thanksgiving we have a section titled “The Valley of the Shadow” that includes her setting of “Kyrie.” She says that she wrote this moving and beautiful piece “at a very dark time in my life.”

The simple text comes from the service of the Roman Catholic Mass but is often, as here, used as a stand-alone piece. It’s always helpful, though, no matter how separate from the original a version is, to look at how it was used in the first place. So if you were to attend an actual service of the Mass you’d participate in singing the text right after the priest or minister had addressed the congregation by saying,

Brethren (brothers and sisters), let us acknowledge our sins, and so prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries.

Then the celebrant would describe these sins:

I have greatly sinned,
in my thoughts and in my words,
in what I have done
and in what I have failed to do,
through my fault, through my fault,
through my most grievous fault. 

That’s a pretty thorough description of how we go wrong, isn’t it? Not only in what we did do, but in what we didn’t. No matter what our personal beliefs may be, we have to admit that we stumble and bumble around—a lot. We wrong others; they wrong us. We react wrongly to others’ wrongs. Our hearts are broken by tragedies large and small over which we have no control. And in the end, what can we do? Beg for mercy, for “eleison.” This idea goes all the way back to a number of psalms in the Hebrew Bible that say “Have mercy upon me, O God, and hear my prayer.”

The concept of mercy can have many branches, but it boils down to the idea of having compassion on and showing kindness to someone who may not deserve it. We use the phrase “I’m throwing myself on the mercy of the court,” meaning that we’re hoping to escape whatever legal punishment we technically should receive. I have a picture here of a supplicant, head bowed, standing in a beam of light, all alone, waiting for the sentence to be pronounced. There’s nothing the person can do to plead his case. Will it be mercy, or will it be justice?

If you are an observant etymologist, you may have realized that, unlike the other texts from the Mass, this one is in Greek. The Latin would be “miserere Domine.” Instead we have transliterations of the Greek words: “Lord, have mercy” is “Κύριε, ἐλέησον.” “Christ, have mercy” is “Χριστέ, ἐλέησον.”  The Greek word “eleison” may seem odd and unfamiliar, but it does crop up in some English words, notably “eleemosynary,” meaning “charitable” and related to the word “alms.” You’ve never heard it? Well, it should be used more often! Try dropping it into your next conversation. By its very nature charity or alms-giving is undeserved, based on need and not on merit, and therefore solidly in the realm of mercy.

I do not have a performance video of Srikijkarn’s piece since the Chorale is premiering the work. So I’m including a version based on Gregorian chant and utterly, utterly beautiful: