Ex Deo Lux (BOYD ANNE)

Anne Boyd's The Quiet Place for Oboe (doubling antique cymbals) Clarinet (doubling rin) Viola and Harp.The Quiet Place was commissioned by the Warwick andLeamington Festival for performance by Okeanos on their New Music Day on 14th July 2002.'The Quiet Place' is a meditation site in the University of York dedicated by Dame Janet Baker 'In honour of thespirituality which is in all people'. It was a place I visited frequently in the months I spent as visiting Professor at the University in late 2001. So soon after the attack on the New York Trade Centre the worldfelt a very unstable place especially to be so far from my Australian home. It was difficult to make much sense of existence in a world of fanatical fundamentalism - both Islamic and Christian. Perhaps for comfort I foundmyself thinking back a thousand years to the vital earth based spirituality of Hildegard of Bingen and uncovered an Antiphon she had composed 'Nunc Aperuit'. This chant became the basis of the work I have written forOkeanos in response to an invitation from Jinny Shaw whom I met in York last year. In English translation the words of the chant translate as 'Now the closed door has opened for us / What the serpent hassuffocated in woman./ Therefore shines forth in thedawn/ the flower from the Virgin Mary. ' The music of 'The Quiet Place' is a simple meditation which explores the moods of this text often retreating into a silencewhich is both breath and transcendence. - Anne Boyd

Jesus Reassures His Mother is a setting of medieval lyric poetry written anonymously in the 14th century. The poet recounts a vision of the young Mary rocking the infant Christ to sleep. The child requests hismother to sing a lullaby but alas knowing her child’s fate she is too sad to sing. Jesus tells her that all mothers worry about their children’s futures and insists that she should sing nevertheless. Mary recounts the visit ofGabriel and the events of Christ’s birth but reflects how sad it is to have delivered a child to such a fate. Jesus reassures his mother that he will be with his father in heaven where Mary will come to join Him at the end oftime there to live in eternal bliss. At this point Mary is persuaded by and echoes her child’s reassuring words and she is joined in this by the choir (now representing us all). The vision fades away in the voice of the narratorwhose loneliness and longing return. We learn that it is Christmas Day. This setting grows from the visionary mystical world inhabited by Julian of Norwich whose Revelations of Divine Love provided the inspiration for awork Anne Boyd composed in 1994. The medium has been expanded from the Song Company’s six solo voices used in the Revelations to the double motet choir of the Sydney Philharmonia who commissioned this work for their 75thanniversary. The parts of the infant Jesus Mary the Narrator and the angel Gabriel are taken by choir soloists: soprano alto tenor and bass. The work is situated in the context of Boyd’s personal musical aestheticwhich she describes as the intersection of Christian Love with Buddhist silence.

Anne Boyd's A Vision: Jesus Reassures His Mother for 6 unaccompanied voices (SSATBB). Composed in 1999 published in 2001. Duration: 14 minutes. Commissioned by the Song Company andperformed by them in Australia Italy and the UK. Recorded and broadcast by the BBC and the ABC.