Re-Wilding The Waste Land

A GAME OF CHESS
T.S.Eliot – A Game of Chess

THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD
Tomás Luis de Victoria – O Vos Omnes  (Tenebrae, Holy Saturday)
T.S.Eliot – The Burial of the dead
Byrd – Deus venerunt gentes  pt.1
T.S.Eliot – The Burial of the dead  (continued)
Ben Rowarth – Deus venerunt gentes  pt.2 WORLD PREMIERE 
T.S.Eliot – The Burial of the dead  (continued)
Ben Rowarth – Deus venerunt gentes  pt.3 WORLD PREMIERE
T.S.Eliot – The Burial of the dead  (continued)
Byrd – Deus venerunt gentes  pt.3

A GAME OF CHESS
T.S.Eliot – A Game of Chess
Tomás Luis de Victoria– Aestimatus sum  (Tenebrae, Holy Saturday)
Linnet Drury – Unmute
Vaughan Williams – Silence and Music  (Ursula Wood)

THE FIRE SERMON
Leighton – God’s Grandeur  (Gerald Manley Hopkins)
T.S.Eliot – The Fire Sermon
Joanna Marsh – now I lay (with everywhere around)  (e.e.cummings) WORLD PREMIERE

DEATH BY WATER
Tomás Luis de Victoria – Caligaverunt oculi mei  (Tenebrae, Good Friday)
T.S.Eliot – Death by water
Alberto Ríos – We are of a tribe
Joanna Marsh – Metachoral in Blue  (Tim Earley) WORLD PREMIERE

WHAT THE THUNDER SAID
Shruthi Rajasekar – Ganga’s Peace WORLD PREMIERE
T.S.Eliot – What the Thunder said
Joanna Marsh – The World is Charged (John F. Deane)

Inspired by T.S. Eliot’s ground-breaking poem ‘The Waste Land’, written 100 years ago in the wake of the catastrophic upheavals of the First World War and the ‘Spanish Flu’, ‘Re-Wilding The Waste Land’ explores cycles of renewal in both creation and creativity. Ensnared in our own pandemic and mindful of David Attenborough’s ‘witness statement’ plea to Re-Wild, desolation flowers into an outpouring of music and poetry.

The shadowy world of Spanish master Victoria’s Tenebrae Responsories for Holy Week (at their rarely heard but intended lower pitch’) are accompanied by William Byrd’s motet ‘Deus, venerunt gentes’, chillingly describing a land wasted through intolerance. “I will show you fear in a handful of dust” (Eliot). Out of this are born world premiere commissions by Joanna Marsh (‘ReWildings’), Ben Rowarth, and Shruthi Rajasekar whose ‘Rebirth of a River’ reflects Indian motifs in ‘The Waste Land’.

Manley Hopkins’ sonnet ‘God’s Grandeur’, sung in Kenneth Leighton’s rapturous setting, claimed that “…for all this, nature is never spent”.  So in a final challenge to reflect and change, Joanna Marsh sets John F. Deane’s ‘The world is charged’, itself a reworking of ‘God’s Grandeur’: new music and poetry to encourage contemplation and hope.

With kind thanks to Director’s Circle Supporter Lynn Biggs