Kasia joined KKTV in June 2019 and is a weekend morning anchor and weekday reporter. She’s a Denver native and graduate of the University of Missouri. Kasia has a great love for Colorado and loves telling the stories of our state. She is very excited to be part of the KKTV team and tell a little bit about our beautiful state!
kassia (Hebrew: ; Greek: , Kassiani, or E’ikasia) is considered the most important woman composer of medieval Byzantine chant. She is also a poet and wrote many works with both religious and secular texts.
The most famous of her works is a hymn for Holy Wednesday, in which she gives voice to a nameless woman from the Gospels who anointed Jesus’ feet with expensive ointment. Legend has it that while Kassia was composing this text, she heard the approach of Emperor Theophilos and immediately hid herself in fear. He read the incomplete poem and added the line “those feet at whose sound Eve hid herself for fear when she saw Thee walking in Paradise.”
Kassia’s poetic mastery and sensibility are made clear in this text, where she uses a set of contrasting images to evoke powerful reflections. Her hope that Christ would bend down to listen to her sighs is grounded in the fact that He came to earth emptying Himself of His glory, and is reinforced by the image of heaven itself bending at his incarnation. It would be a mistake to put this music in the “curiosity” category: it is moving and beautiful, and well worth listening to in its own right.