Dream Tryst (2018, rev. 2019)
A Setting of Francis Thompson’s Dream Tryst.
SSATB
Duration:
4′
First performance:
24 March 2019
City of Canterbury Chamber Choir, Edward Rhys Harry, St Paul’s Church, Canterbury, UK
Scottish premiere:
17 November 2019
University of Aberdeen Chamber Choir, Sam Paul, St Machar’s Cathedral, Aberdeen, UK
Score
Programme note
Dream Tryst is a sustained and atmospheric setting of Francis Thompson’s 1890s work of the same title. Thompson is most well known today for his epic poem The Hound of Heaven, on which most of his posthumous reputation hangs, and for being one of the great religious, mystic poets of the Victorian era. Like my earlier set of Partsongs (2008-12), this work tries to distil some of the essence of the partsong that was in vogue in the early twentieth century, though ‘re-imagining’ this genre for a very different time and mindset.
PAC
