for soprano, mezzo, violin, keyboard (2025)
8’30
to Juliet Fraser, for her Lament Project
f.p. Juliet Fraser (sop), Christelle Monney (mez), Sarah Saviet (vn), Eliza McCarthy (keyboard), Aldeburgh Festival, 21 June 2025
****
there I heard naught
but sea roaring,
ice-cold wave…
…swan song…
…gannet’s clamour…
…curlew cry…
…gull singing…
storms…beat…
…tern echoed…
… eagle screamed
troubled now
the thoughts of my heart,
that I the high streams,
the saltwave tumult
explore alone…
…far from here…
…seeking
for now
my mind writhes…
my heart
mid sea-flood…
greedy and eager,
lone-flyer screaming
The text is extracted from the Anglo-Saxon poem The Seafarer, edited to imply a transformation from human to bird. In the first two sections, the narrator is surrounded by the cries of various seabirds as she travels; in the third and fourth sections she appears to identify with these birds, as a ‘lone-flyer’ driven onwards across the sea by her ‘troubled thoughts’. The recitation guides the four performers through a transition into bird-sounds, leaving behind ‘human’ forms of music-making as the piece continues, towards a euphoric sense of freedom.