Please contact us directly to enquire about bulk discounts.
I was thinking about the perfect city, this was my starting place, but this only reminded me of how many people, in any age, are wandering through the world looking for a home. Living life without a home seems to us like one of the very worst things that can happen. The first text I found was Psalm 107, which exhorts us to pray to the Lord for rescue from all the ills that can beset our lives. If we are lost, ‘in a desart way,’ the Lord will find us a town. The language of the Bay Psalm Book reminded me of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim Progress, where Christian is making the ultimate difficult journey. The town he finds is Vanity, and at Vanity Fair all things can be bought. The description of what is available is a chilling reminder of how little has changed.
The music is scored for double choir, which gives many opportunities for spatial effects as well as a lot of sonic variety. In the 3rd movement, a hymn, I tried to evoke a folk-like singing here, with shades of sacred harp music. It comes as a big contrast to the previous two movements. Bunyan warns us that, in an attempt to escape sin, we might end up by committing worse ones, and at the end of Pilgrim’s Progress, warns against extremism.
In the last movement, using a passage from Proverbs, a father tries to instil into his child the need for wisdom and understanding, although the ambiguity of the music suggests that this is not as easy as it sounds. The version is the Geneva Bible, used by the Puritans in America. This links me to my own journey back in time, to my 8th great grandfather, Comfort Starr, who made the perilous journey to Charlestown, Massachusetts, in the 17th century.
Commissioned by the DR VokalEnsemblet and Yale Schola Cantorum. Premiered by the DR VokalEnsemblet, conducted by David Hill, in the Trinitatis Kirke, Copenhagen, on the 29th of June, choi2023.
