KASSIA Sound Icon a film in five scenes
Premiering this coming Thursday, 24 October at the Newport Beach Film Festival
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A ritual meditation that considers perceptions of 9th-c. Kassia of Byzantium, the earliest female composer with extant works. Experimental choreographer Mariia Bakalo and Emmy Award-Winning filmmaker Noah Amir Arjomand join Brett Umlauf to reflect on the myriad ways of venerating this iconic hymnographer’s legacy.
I. THE CELL
discerning
Danced within the dimensions of a monastic cell to sounds gathered at a female monastery overlooking Mount Olympus.
Nuns recite Kassia’s epigrams on monastic life and chant her most famous hymn “Lord, the woman fallen into many sins.”
We consider the different paths women have taken to the monastic life over the centuries. Listening and feeling for boundaries, but also for portals. Discerning what is restriction, what is freedom on either side of the cloister wall.
A mallet strikes the talanton, a long wooden block, calling the nuns to prayer. The slam and lock of the cloister gate bids visitors farewell. The rhythms of each woman’s holy routine continue.
II. THE WHEEL
learning
This hypnotic Byzantine vocal exercise, based on the medieval “Wheel of St. John Koukouzelis,” cycles through the musical modes of Byzantine chant.
Sand and black stones, indicating the different modes, recall Aegean island mosaics like those on Kasos, the legendary home of Kassia’s unmarked tomb.
The chant’s syllables symbolize a prayer. The infinitely repeating pattern of the Wheel suggests the continuous life force of the tradition, passed from chanter to chanter.
Filmed in a Native American Garden, itself a living, sacred space of learning that honors the land’s original inhabitants and features flora native to the region.
III. THE HATE
sharpening
We imagine Kassia’s experience living the monastic life in the midst of a heaving cosmopolis.
This film interprets Kassia’s epigrammatic verses that all begin with the word Μισώ (I Hate). Her muscular condemnation of hypocrisy is a list 27 lines long of the people and behaviors she most hates.
Lay chanters, monastics, artists and activists recite her rebukes in medieval Greek, English and Turkish. Though Kassia’s monastery does not survive, that of her spiritual father still stands in ruins (pictured here) in Kassia’s historical home city of Constantinople, modern-day Istanbul.
The texts are bound by a rising and falling Kyrie Eleison that the women of St. Anysia Byzantine Choir chant weekly in service at Thessaloniki’s St. Demetrios.
IV. THE HYMN
protecting
Kassia’s Hymn to St. Pelagia honors the patron saint of performers who converted to the faith and pilgrimaged to Jerusalem. Devout Pelagia identified as the male hermit monk “Pelagios.”
How does it sound? Kassia’s melody flows through scribal hands and chanting voices from the 800s to today.
The signs and formulas of Byzantine notation transmit Kassia’s music, as do “the ears of the congregation.” The development of the oral tradition also preserves her work.
The identity of Kassia’s melody depends on the interpreter. We highlight two versions of her Hymn to St. Pelagia: one from a medieval manuscript and one from a 19th-century manuscript.
V. THE BREATH
expanding
…Evil is easier than good;
for the good is like a steep ascent…
-Kassia, tr. Tripolitis
The dancer makes a pilgrimage in California’s astonishing nature. We contemplate the function of Kassia’s works outside their liturgical context.
Kassia’s Hymn to St. Agathi sung from the medieval notation accompanies the journey, along with a sister’s reminder of St. Gregory of Nazianzus’s maxim. She says, “It is better to think about God, than to breathe.”
Noah Amir Arjomand Direction,
Photography
Noah Amir Arjomand is an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker and critically acclaimed author. His feature-length documentary Eat Your Catfish (2021) has won awards at international festivals and aired on TV in the US, Europe, and Asia. Noah has produced photo and video work for productions of Morningside Opera, Wet Ink Ensemble, SIREN Baroque and Mercury Arts. Noah also wrote and directed a series of seven animated educational films for the National Endowment for Democracy and Indiana University. He holds degrees from Princeton and Columbia Universities and is currently studying toward an MFA in writing for the performing arts at the University of California Riverside.
Mariia Bakalo Choreography, Dance
Mariia Bakalo is a choreographer from Ukraine. She is focused on exploration of the role of art in the time of war. In her before-the-war reality, Mariia's artistic research integrated two of her biggest passions, which are literature and dance. Mariia has collaborated with various cultural institutions from Ukraine, Germany, Austria, Lithuania, and the UK. She is currently an MFA candidate at UC Riverside, a recipient of the Gluck Fellowship, as well as I-Portunos, the Danceweb Scholarship Program, and the Tanja Leidke Foundation stipend.
Photo by Oleksiy Papulov
Soprano Brett Umlauf spotlights women composers’ earliest and newest works with her "pealing, focused sound" and "luminous yet earthy” performances (The New York Times). 2023 saw her originate the role of Fleur in Kate Soper’s new opera The Hunt as well as complete a Greek-Turkish Fulbright fellowship, walking in 9th-c. abbess Kassia of Byzantium’s footsteps for her project Hazelnut Road: Vows of Stability, Acts of Mobility. Brett is co-founder of SUORE Project, a trio celebrating nun composers, and was a longtime principal artist at New York City’s Morningside Opera, Company XIV and SIREN Baroque. The Swedish Institute, American Scandinavian Society and Swedish Women's Educational Association have awarded her work.
KASSIA Sound Icon
Kassia of Byzantium is the earliest woman composer with surviving works, yet few know her name. She founded a monastery in 9th-century Constantinople, where she wrote hymns and gnomic verses.
KASSIA Sound Icon brings her vibrant texts and music to new audiences in a series of five short scenes which we are calling “sound icons.” The 30-minute film, comprising these five scenes, can also be presented as a multi-channel installation. Noah Amir Arjomand (film), Mariia Bakalo (movement) and Brett Umlauf (music) devised the work.
Icon veneration is integral to the Orthodox faith. The worshipper bows before and can “touch” the saint, kissing hands or feet, cross or holy book depicted in the painting. Kassia lived during the Age of Iconoclasm, when icon worship was outlawed and punished. Nevertheless she was a staunch defender of iconophiles. We invite viewers to connect with Kassia through these “sound Icons,” to “touch” and be touched by different aspects of the saint’s life and works.
Umlauf was a 2022-23 Fulbright Fellow in Greece and Turkey, where she researched Kassia’s life and works. KASSIA Sound Icon grew out of her voice and field recordings from her ethnographic work in a women’s Byzantine choir and an Orthodox women’s monastery. Read more about the origin project here: In Her Footsteps: KASSIA.
KASSIA Sound Icon shines a bright light on an important woman overshadowed in the patriarchal telling of medieval history and on a musical tradition often ignored in the Western musical canon.
THIS WORK IS SUPPORTED BY THE GLUCK FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM AT UC RIVERSIDE
