As part of the release of the Young Composer Scheme, Vol. 2 album on NMC Recordings Digital label, I am going ‘behind the notes’ of Morals + Interludes, and sharing its starting point and who or what inspired me.

There are were several parts at play in creating this series of short choral works featured on this album - Morals + Interludes - and I think it’s important to shine a light on the people who inspired each of the five choral works that make up this series.

Back in April 2020 (penny drops), like many, I was finding it difficult to find purpose, let alone create. After the crazed binge of social media in the hope that I would fall on something that would make me say “wow, I know EXACTLY what to do now”, I turned my back on it. The overwhelming sense that a million opinions, thoughts, feelings, concerns, experiences were just sitting behind my blank screen was too much. And this silent noise was even more present in this time of isolation and digitising our entire lives in light of social distancing; from the work we do to the socialising we need, to quite literally the only way many can communicate with one another – in this ‘chaos’ of the virtual. People, understandably, wanted to be heard.

However, I began to discover, as many did, that these enforced periods of isolation is also an important time for reflection. Self-reflection. Perhaps this is an essential moment of our lives for repose, as we quite literally live with our own thoughts and deal with not only the mundane but even the existential.  

I thought, how about I take these two elements we are embracing/tackling at the moment - this reflection on the past/future and this concept that we have immortalised our lives digitally/virtually - and try and create something from it?

This was timed to perfection. I was in need of a starting point for my new work with the lovely and insanely talented singers of the 2019-20 National Youth Choirs of Great Britain Fellowship, and this realisation could be just that starting point to create something new. Something meaningful. I tasked the singers to send over any ‘virtual memories’ they felt would reflect a part of their lives that have meaning to them in any way. I suggested that it could be: “an old teenage confessional you once posted on YouTube; a home-video of you with family when you were young; a recorded conversation you may have had with a friend recently; or even a blooper/random vid you may have on your phone from a night out (I am sure there are way too many on Facebook of me in some club in Cardiff when I was at university).”

I waited…

iii. This was mine

The inspiration for third in this series - Morals + Interludes - came from multiple places.

Through this period of reflection, in isolation and away from loved ones, we all started to think about what was ‘home’. Could we believe any longer that the building which we eat, work and sleep can truly be home? What made a place, home? In a world where people continually struggle to hold onto their homes through an absolute, relative, situational and generational poverty, is ‘home’ what you make it?

A home may not merely be the four walls that surround you, but the people within it, the memories you share and the community that surrounds it. ‘Home’ is shaped by the good and the bad. ‘Home’ can be the shelter from the outside. ‘Home’ for some can be a place of worship or a safe place that you hold close. ‘Home’ is fluid and can be moved. Homes can also be snatched away, altered or destroyed.

The idea of home has been one that regularly plays on my mind, and one that I thought a lot about when working with a choir back on home-turf of South Wales in 2019 (more about home… can be found here). It was odd to revisit these thoughts with this new context.

Then the third ‘virtual memory’ hit my inbox, and interestingly it was a shared experience between two of the 2019-20 Fellowship singers; alto Ella Rainbird-Earley and tenor James Botcher. A wee video from Ella’s collection on her mobile phone, walking up a street of terraced houses. Stopping. Directing the lens towards two homes and saying “This was mine, this was my house”. The two houses featured were the old family homes of both Ella and neighbouring James. (Amazing coincidence that all these years later they would both be singing a piece inspired by the fact they were neighbours. If only you could talk to your younger self).

There was a simple beauty and a nostalgia about this image. Revisiting your old stomping-ground. Reliving the steps that you often took to return to a safe place - to your home.

I often read poetry or checking out new visual arts if I’m not composing, and during last summer I was reading a great deal of poetry from Wales. One work that stuck out when thinking about all of these threads was R. S. Thomas’ Reservoirs. This poem appeared in “Not That He Brought Flowers”, published in 1968, and was written soon after the opening of Llyn Celyn (Lake Celyn) Reservoir. Capel Celyn was a rural community to the north-west of Bala in north Wales, in the Afon Tryweryn valley that was flooded to create a reservoir, Llyn Celyn, to supply Liverpool and The Wirral, with water for industry. When the valley was flooded in 1965, the village and its buildings, including the post office, the school, and a chapel with a cemetery, were all lost. Twelve houses and farms were drowned, and 48 people of the 67 who lived in the valley lost their homes. In all, some 800 acres of land were submerged. Llyn Celyn, otherwise known as the Tryweryn Reservoir, was formed. Thomas speaks with bitterness of the compulsory purchase of the Welsh countryside by the English and the great loss to the community.

This was mine is a reflection on these recent experiences of finding meaning in our homes, and our long-felt connections of lost homes within our history.

This was mine,
This was my house.

Where can we go?
We have walked the shore.
Where can we go?

This was our house,
Gardens gone,
Our home,
Where can we go?

need more?

Please feel free to head over to the dedicated page for Morals +Interludes to find out more or listen to the whole album release.