O, Sumptuous Moment (1992)
SATB
Text: Poem by Emily Dickinson
First performed by Cappella Nova, Stevenson Hall, Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Glasgow 10/08/93
Duration c. 4 mins
Shine Out, Fair Sun (1994)
SATB with divisions
Text: George Chapman (1559? - 1634), from ‘The Masque of the Twelve Months’
Duration c. 5 mins
Commissioned by Cappella Nova / Scottish Arts Council
First performed by Cappella Nova, Inverness Cathedral 10/12/94
Beachwalking (1996)
SATB
Text: Chris Dooks
Duration c. 4 mins
Commissioned by Moray House Singers
First performed by The Moray House Singers, St. Giles' Cathedral 30/04/96
Elegy for Colum Cille (2000)
SATB with divisions
Text: Poem by Brian Johnstone, especially commissioned for this piece.
Duration c. 6 mins
Commissioned by Cappella Nova for St. Columba's Day 2000
First performed St. Columba's Church, Pont Street, London 9/6/2000
The People's Mass: Prayer and Agnus Dei (2002)
Prayer
Baritone solo, harp accompaniment
Agnus Dei
Unaccompanied Vocal Ensemble
solo SSATBarB
Commissioned by The Dunedin Consort
First performed by The Dunedin Consort
(Listen here to tracks 17 and 18)
For A Moment Of Night (2003)
SSAATTBB (with solo passages)
Texts by
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) and Henry Beston (1888-1968)
Duration: c. 2 mins
Commissioned by Cappella Nova.
Click here to listen to a MIDI version (text included)
“The everlasting universe of things
Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves…”
from ‘Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni’
by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
“When the great earth, abandoning day, rolls up the deeps of the heavens and the universe, a new door opens for the human spirit…..
….. For a moment of night we have a glimpse of ourselves and of our world islanded in its stream of stars — pilgrims of mortality, voyaging between horizons across eternal seas of space and time.”
from ‘The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod’ by writer and naturalist, Henry Beston (1888-1968)
Tribute (2009)
For Alumni of Hull University Music Department
Unison mixed voices, Fl, Ob, Cl or Tpt, Tbn, Pno, Strings (4.4.3.2.1)
First performed by the Alumni ensemble, Middleton Hall, Hull University 12/07/09
Text: excerpt from 'The Dry Salvages', from Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts.
Listen here to a MIDI version
Laugh And Be Merry (2011)
SATB (with divisions) and Chamber Ensemble
Fl, Cl, Bsn, Tpt, Tbn, Hn in F, Strings: 4.3.2.2.1
Text by John Masefield (1878-1967)
Duration: c. 4 mins
Laugh and be merry, remember, better the world with a song,
Better the world with a blow in the teeth of a wrong.
Laugh, for the time is brief, a thread the length of a span.
Laugh and be proud to belong to the old proud pageant of man.
Laugh and be merry: remember, in olden time.
God made Heaven and Earth for joy He took in a rhyme,
Made them, and filled them full with the strong red wine of
His mirth
The splendid joy of the stars: the joy of the earth.
So we must laugh and drink from the deep blue cup of the sky,
Join the jubilant song of the great stars sweeping by,
Laugh, and battle, and work, and drink of the wine outpoured
In the dear green earth, the sign of the joy of the Lord.
Laugh and be merry together, like brothers akin,
Guesting awhile in the rooms of a beautiful inn,
Glad till the dancing stops, and the lilt of the music ends.
Laugh till the game is played; and be you merry, my friends.
Cloths of Heaven (2018)
A setting of the poem ‘He Wishes For The Cloths of Heaven’ by W. B. Yeats (1865-1939), for SATB with divisions.
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
Within The Living Eye (2020)
A song-cycle for large, unaccompanied chorus, setting six poems by Kathleen Raine. Commissioned by and to be given its première performance and commercial CD release in 2023, by Glasgow School of Art Choir.