Availability

Score on special sale from the Hire Library

Programme Notes

I have been watching and listening to birds since my early teens, and in the last twenty years I have incorporated birdsong – both British and Australian – into my music. Unlike Messiaen, I don’t attempt exact transcriptions, except with birds such as the cuckoo that sing precise notes. For this piece, I recorded a lot of birdsong during the spring, particularly blackbirds and song thrushes from my house in North London, and derived singable phrases from it. Nine soloists spread around the cathedral – four sopranos, two altos, two tenors and a baritone – imitate the birds against a quiet chordal background from the rest of the choir. The first soprano is a song thrush; the second a blackcap; the third a great tit; the fourth, and the two altos, three blackbirds; the first tenor a woodpigeon and the second a collared dove; the baritone (singing falsetto) a cuckoo. I decided I would only include a cuckoo, now sadly an increasingly rare bird, if I heard one, and fortunately I did, near Deal in Kent. The song thrush begins the piece with a lone solo (as a real one did on a number of May mornings when I was woken up at 4am). Then we hear the three blackbirds, entering separately; then the blackcap and woodpigeon, followed by the collared dove with the song thrush. Lastly all the birds, including the cuckoo and great tit, sing together for about a minute before they are cut off, to leave a final quiet chord from the chorus.

© DM

Reviews

‘Four minutes of the art that conceals art, in which human voices imitate birdsong with hallucinatory precision.’
The Spectator (Richard Bratby), 19 May 2018
 

Dawn Chorus

St Philip's Cathedral (Birmingham, United Kingdom)

Ex Cathedra/Jeffrey Skidmore

Dawn Chorus

St Philip's Cathedral (Birmingham, United Kingdom)

Ex Cathedra/Jeffrey Skidmore

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Lichfield Cathedral (Lichfield, Staffordshire, United Kingdom)

Ex Cathedra/Jeffrey Skidmore