I am delighted to have been commissioned to write a new piece for The Gesualdo Six’s concert at the Brecon Choir Festival this summer. The work, Prayer, will receive its world premiere on 18 July as part of the festival programme.
The piece sets George Herbert’s celebrated poem Prayer, one of the most evocative and elusive texts in English literature. Rather than offering a direct definition, Herbert presents a sequence of vivid images and metaphors that circle around the nature of prayer. Notably, the poem contains no main verb; it never declares what prayer is. Instead, prayer seems to hover above the text like a descant, underpin it like a ground bass, or thread through it like a cantus firmus.
Widely regarded as one of the finest poems in the English language, Prayer has been described by writer Dennis Lennon as being “like a diamond with twenty-seven facets”. Its rich imagery encompasses both the earthly and the celestial, moving effortlessly between the tangible and the mysterious:
“The milky way, the bird of Paradise,
Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul’s blood,
The land of spices; something understood”
It has been a privilege to engage with such a remarkable text and I look forward to performing the work at the Brecon Choir Festival. The commission has been made possible through the generous support of Dr Adele Davidson of Kenyon College, in honour of the George Herbert Society, and The Fidelio Charitable Trust, whose commitment to new music continues to make projects such as this possible.
