Output details

A New Song : [for two choirs and soloists]

A New Song is a choral work commissioned by Christ Church Cathedral Choir, Oxford [‘One of the finest choirs on earth’ – Channel 4; ‘To hear a choir like this is to hear a quality of musicianship with no equal anywhere in the world’ – The Independent on Sunday.]

Originality: ‘A New Song’ redefines the relationship of sound, text and sensory experience in a liturgical setting; a departure from the traditional nature of most contemporary liturgical music. Thus, a non-narrative, non-rhyming text with short exclamations, interjections and commentaries is fully integrated with sub-particulates of vowel and consonant; conveyed through voiced and unvoiced extended vocal techniques, humming and song. It conveys the experience of being born into a world of multi-sensory experiences. Pleasure, but also threat. And it communicates taste, touch and smell through sound – from one modality to another – a synaesthetic experience. The deliberate use of difference tones and low frequency pitches serves to create novel perceptual outcomes and a physiological response in the listener. This creates new insights to the text and its symbiotic relationship to the music, expanding the imaginative scope.

Significance: ‘A New Song’ seeks to enhance knowledge and practice by addressing research questions such as: can the simultaneous creation of pitch, timbre, texture and text combined with an innovative approach to synaesthetic communication, create a new paradigm in liturgical music? And: can the expressive range and imaginative scope of liturgical music be increased in such a way that heightens the aesthetic experience of listeners without alienating them?

Rigour: The application of the principles outlined above and the use of new harmonic constructions (interchords) is precisely and methodically applied to form a coherent gestalt – a new song.