On 8 November Benjamin Kirk conducts the Leeds Guild of Singers in the world premiere of Martin Suckling’s Songs of Sleep and Prophecy at Holy Trinity Church. The 14-minute work for unaccompanied SATB chorus was commissioned by Leeds Guild of Singers in memory of David Eaves, a much-loved member and friend of the choir.
Songs of Sleep and Prophecy sets both lullabies and visions of the future across five movements. For Suckling they represent “a magic singing of a desired world into existence” both soothing and terrifyingly apocalyptic by turns. Nonetheless, “both help us navigate a period of waiting, reaching out to draw near the arrival of some new way of being.” The piece combines sacred and secular texts. The lullabies are sung in Gaelic (movements two and four) and taken from the collection of traditional songs and lyrics Eilean Fraoich. Suckling’s prophetic texts taken from across the Bible, drawing on Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Jeremiah, Kings, Daniel, the Psalms, Revelation, and the Gospels, and amongst others.
Suckling’s lullabies borrow the shape and mood of traditional folksong - ‘Caidil m’ulaidh’ (‘Sleep my darling’) draws the susurration of the caressing ocean into the enveloping harmony of a slowly rotating accompaniment. It is a fascination with folksong and lullaby reflected in Suckling’s recent pieces for strings - Òran Fìdhle (Violin Song) – a set of 21 violin duos from 2021-22 that draw on the rich tradition of Gaelic song – and Her Lullaby, a solo work commissioned by the Royal Academy of Music for their bicentenary whose version for cello was recorded by Aurora Orchestra’s Sébastien Van Kuijk for Delphian album The Tuning in February 2022.
The prophetic movements are rendered quite differently - a stately nobility in the first movement, an explosive ferocity in the third, and an incantatory, almost hypnotic stasis in the fifth and final movement. They all share the feature of having multiple strands of music coexisting at different timescales. In the final movement, three timescales intersect: a background of rhythmic chanting at high speed – almost like a flutter-echo of the slower iterations of the line ‘there shall be no more’ which lies at a middle tempo. Beneath these, slowest of all, the basses and tenors intone the actual content of the prophecy in warm, resonant chords: there shall be no night.