Reflection

Today I’m struggling with a piece that should have taken an afternoon to write down. It appeared in the mist when summoned, almost on cue and apparently fully formed, but it has taken another few months to grasp once more the geometry of its form, the ratios and rationality of its quixotic light and shade. The piece is a gift-cum-commission for Edward Higginbottom, at the end of his long tenure at New College, Oxford. It’s a short setting of George Herbert’s ‘Love bade me welcome’ for unaccompanied choir, and from the moment I started working on it, it was clear in my mind that this piece existed—complete, perfect and (to me at least) unutterably beautiful and heart-rending....