What Larks (2022) 5′ for voice, chamber ensemble and electronics.

Mezzo soprano, flute, clarinet, electric guitar, cello, piano and recorded sounds. Words from Summer – at Devil’s Dyke by Valerie Whittington 

What Larks was commissioned as part of the South Downs Songbook Project initiated by Ed Hughes and the Orchestra of Sound and Light. A CD of the project entitled Distant Voices, New Worlds has recently been released by Divine Art Recordings. 

This piece takes as its starting point the landscape of the South Downs and tries to imagine it as experienced by the lark. Partly I did this through recording larksong and slowing it down so that I could transcribe the hidden melodies, as if by listening again and again I could gain some kind of insight into their experience. What is it to be a lark? How do they experience the closeness and immediacy of their nests in the ground, and the vastness and freedom of soaring above it? How can we understand their perspective? What is their song telling us? How do cliffs, sky and the sea hold it all in place? 

During composition, I read and re-read a suite of poems by my friend and collaborator Valerie Whittington. Val allows me to range freely across her poems, using her words as raw materials that evolve in conversation with the sound world, in this case pecked apart and fragmented into repeated bird calls. I found the powerful landscape of the Downs evoked through images of listening and intense light: ‘stark white and blue’, the ‘hard pressed chalk’, the larks ‘speaking in tongues’ – ‘speaking decisively, but not for us’.. Her line:

I have not written this

Not yet

became a refrain for the whole piece – for all the things we have simultaneously done and not done – written, sung, heard – as our lives play out through imagination and time.

 

Lyrics (condensed version):

I have not written this

Not yet

I have not sung this

 Hard pressed chalk

So bright it hurts our eyes

You have not heard this

Have you not heard

The sun is exploding

 

Full text as set:

 

I have not written this

I have

I have not I

I have not written this

Not not not not not

Not not not

Not not not not not

I have not written

I have not not not not not not not not not

Not yet

 

I have

I have not sung this

I have not sung

I have not sung

I have not sung

 

I have not sung this

I have not sung:

 

Hard pressed chalk

So bright so bright so bright

So bright it hurts our eyes

 

You who you who have not have not

You have not heard

Not who not heard not heard this

Have you not heard

The sun, the sun, the sun, the sun, the sun

The sun is exploding

The sun, the sun, the sun, the sun, the sun

The sun is exploding

exploding