On 9 March Howard Goodall’s Eternal Light: A Requiem (2008) made its Ukrainian debut at the Central Baptist Church in Kyiv, with the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Viktoriia Konchakovska. The performance commemorated four years of the ongoing conflict, with soloists Kateryna Myronets, Oleksandr Ponomarenko, and Mykola Porada. Watch it here.
In a message to the musicians, Goodall said, “It is a great, great honour for me that you have chosen to perform the premiere of this piece – at a time of such difficulty and sorrow but also a time of great courage and resilience. You are an example to the whole world.” Watch the performance here.
The 40-minute Eternal Light is scored for soprano, tenor and/or baritone soloists, SATB chorus, a pair of keyboards, optional harp, and strings. Though its ten movements follow the traditional pattern of the Requiem mass setting, Goodall’s strips back the traditional Latin text to its essence and interleaves it with English poetry from across the last five hundred years, drawing on texts by Francis Quarles, Ann Thorp, John Henry Newman, Mary Elizabeth Frye, John McCrae, and Phineas Fletcher.
Commissioned and conceived as an ambitious choral-orchestral-dance work to celebrate the 20th anniversary of London Musici, the work has since been performed over 800 times internationally by groups ranging from amateur and community choirs to celebrated professional choral ensembles such as Conspirare, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Chorus (conducted by Simon Halsey), and Royal Northern Sinfonia and Chorus. Goodall himself has conducted the work on numerous occasions since 2013.
Eternal Light premiered at the Lowry in 2008 with Rambert Dance Company in a production choreographed by Mark Baldwin, with London Musici, conductor Paul Hoskins, and the Manchester University Chamber Choir Ad Solem; the world premiere recording featured Natasha Marsh, Alfie Boe and Christopher Maltman as soloists, joined by the Choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, and London Musici conducted by Stephen Darlington.
In 2023 Goodall composed Blue Sky and Wheatfields as a tribute to Ukraine, inspired by a painting of the same name by Simon Fairless, honouring the colours of the flag. Goodall said of the piece, “the reflective piano solo, in the form of a song or hymn without words, imagines a future for the Ukrainian people of peace and freedom, both those Ukrainians fighting for their homeland and those many families who live amongst us here in the rest of Europe, separated from their loved ones.”