Year: September 2018
Voices: This piece exists in two versions, one for a chamber group of AATTBrB, and the other in SAATTB
Duration: 3:30”
Text: English, Mary Elizabeth Coleridge.
Difficulty: 3
Performance History: Premiere scheduled for April 2020 by the Gesualdo Six, but delayed due to the pandemic. Premiere of SATB version by Cappella Caeciliana June 2023, with further performances in Oct 2023 and the London premiere at the Actors’ Church, Covent Gardens, in March 2024. French premiere by Cappella Caeciliana at Notre-Dame des Blancs Manteaux in Paris 15th Mar 2025.
About: A short and effective setting of Coleridge’s iconic text, the material uses the repetition of syllables to create the stasis of the idyllic scene of the poem. The dual image of the bird and its reflection are paralleled in the music by canonic entries that present a motif and its ‘echo image’ in close proximity.
Navigate Choral Works:
Tunes for
Metrical Psalter
A Taste of
Trapped Sun
The Mother
of God
Gallagher
Sometimes I
dream of Blue
I Thirst
Eloheinu
Where I go, I
hear the noise
Children, the wide
world over
If ye love me
Sparrows' Anthem
Tearing as it
is Woven
The Blue Bird
Asphyxiate
Wedding Song
More than Gold
Emmanuel Carol
A Slave in the
Land of Liberty
Anthem for
Doomed Youth
Hinneni
Psalm 16
The Trial
What Can
I Say?
Three Meditations