for unaccompanied mixed chorus (16-24 voices)
duration c. 13 minutes
composed in 1967
dedication:
published by Novello/Wise Music
recordings
This work is a setting of texts by two 17th century writers, Sir Thomas Browne and William Drumond of Hawthornden. The prose passages chosen deal with three aspects of the human experience: first Drummond meditates on man's inhumanity to man, and this is followed by Browne's analysis of the view held by the ancient Egyptians with regard to death and its relevance to the world of the present. The final movement is a setting of a visionary extract frmom Dummond which uses the idea of an other-worldly heaven as a symbol for the way in which man consoles himself in the face of suffering and death by the exercise of the creative imagination.
Justin Connolly
(source Novello score)