messages

28 July 2024 at Worcester Cathedral (Worcester, England) given by Beth Taylor (mezzo-soprano), Three Choirs Festival Voices, Philharmonia Orchestra, and Geraint Bowen (cond.)

Messages permeate our everyday; from a flippant text message to the profound advice given by a grandparent, messages we often take needlessly to heart to messages we should take more heed of. Initially inspired by the message of love to a distant partner in Gustav Holst’s The Cloud Messenager, Dearden’s messages examines our reactions to some of life’s startling and poignant events, and the lessons gleaned from them.

Each of the five movements is inspired or sets the words from either a civilisation or a person who wanted to share, to honour, or to warn. Dearden has excerpted, adapted, and created text which responds to the Mayan Account of the Spanish Conquest (1540-1546) in the Chilam Balam of Chumayel, Kao Khalia Yang’s moving letter to a refugee child going to ‘a better place’, a heartfelt poem of youthful vigour and the yearning for liberation called 'Ascension' by Caleb Simon (Worcestershire's 2023 Young Poet Laureate), Psalms 46:6 and 53 from Clementine Vulgate, and a public report from Sandia National Laboratories (1993) for long-term nuclear waste warning messages following disaster.

This work was commissioned by the Three Choirs Festival, with the generous support from the Colwinston Charitable Trust and the Three Choirs Festival Commissioning Circle.

-njd.

SATB choir (divisi), Solo mezzo-soprano, Percussion (1 player; vibraphone, 5-octave marimba, suspended cymbal, bass drum, medium tom, chimes), Timpani, Strings (minimum 6.6.4.4.2.)

16’