Anna Akhmatova’s poem, written in 1912, and published two years later in her second collection, Chetki (‘Rosary’), was commended to me a few years ago by a friend who had read it in another – unrhymed – English translation. Curious, I sought out the Russian original which, as I thought, does rhyme, and so I set about producing a rhymed English version, partly as a challenge to myself, and partly as a gift for my friend. Then the pandemic arrived, and the world changed. I wanted to write a piece in response to being in lockdown, and Akhmatova’s words, which focus on being alone with one’s thoughts, seemed to fit.

I’ve learned to live a life that’s simple, wise,
To look to heaven and offer God a prayer,
And on long walks try to anaesthetise,
As night draws on, my needless, anxious cares.

When burdocks rustle all along the gorge,
And rowan clusters, yellow-red, incline,
Happy are the lines that then I forge,
Of life that’s withered, withered and sublime.

So I return. The fluffy cat my hand
With sweetly purring licks now deigns to take,
And on the sawmill brightly burning brands
Atop its turret blaze across the lake.

Sometimes the quiet is broken by a stork
Alighting on the roof with piercing cries.
And if you were to knock upon my door,
I think I may not even realise.

Recorded live in the Chapel of St John’s College, Cambridge, 23 March 2023.  Sung by (S) Katherine Gregory, Hannah Dienes-Williams, Emily Callow, Emily India Evans, Susanna Mackay, Helena Paish; (A) Alec D’Oyly, Alice Hilder-Jarvis, Alasdair Austin, Sophie Williams; (T) Louis Watkins, Joseph Hancock, Carlos Rodríguez Otero; (B) Benedict Randall Shaw, Max Todes, Henry Montgomery, Jack Harris, Jonathan Hatley, Greg Bannan.  Directed by George Herbert.

With one's thoughts

This piece was selected for the London Festival of Contemporary Church Music in 2020.  Scores are available from Encore Publications (https://encorepublications.com/publications.shtml#beattie_s).  The words, which I have translated from Rilke, are:

For could she do otherwise than be
proud of him who beautified the most commonplace in her life?
Was not even the lofty night, wonted in its greatness,
as if beside itself as he appeared?

Did also the time he went missing not
immeasurably redound to his glory?
Had not the wisest men permuted ear
for mouth? And was the Temple

not as new at his voice? Oh,
’tis true she had restrained herself
a hundred times from
beaming with joy. She followed him amazed.

But at that wedding feast,
when suddenly there was no wine,–
she looked across at him, seeking a gesture,
and did not comprehend he should object.

And then he did it. Later she saw
she had set him on his path:
now he was performing actual miracles,
and the full sacrifice was ordained,

inexorably. Yes, it was written.
But was it time?
It was her: she the trigger
in the blindness of her vanity.

At that table laden with fruit and greens,
she shared in the joy and did not realise that
with that wine the water of her tears
had turned to blood.

Recorded live in the Chapel of St John’s College, Cambridge, 23 March 2023.  Sung by (S) Katherine Gregory, Hannah Dienes-Williams, Emily Callow, Emily India Evans, Susanna Mackay, Helena Paish; (A) Alec D’Oyly, Alice Hilder-Jarvis, Alasdair Austin, Sophie Williams; (T) Louis Watkins, Joseph Hancock, Carlos Rodríguez Otero; (B) Benedict Randall Shaw, Max Todes, Henry Montgomery, Jack Harris, Jonathan Hatley, Greg Bannan.  Directed by George Herbert.

At Cana

This piece was premiered by the Choir of Selwyn College, Cambridge, on Advent Sunday 2020.  Scores are available from Encore Publications (https://encorepublications.com/publications.shtml#beattie_s).  The words, which I have translated from Rilke, are:

It was not the entrance of an angel, mark you,
that startled her. Any more than others start
when sun’s rays or moon by night
intrude into a room,
she maintained to be affronted by
the form angels take;
she hardly guessed how onerous
that sojourn is. (O, if we knew
how pure she was. Had not a resting hind
once glimpsed her in the woods,
and lost itself in her such that,
unmated, it begat a unicorn,
the beast of purity and light?)
It was not the angel’s entrance, but the closeness
of the youngling’s face
as he bowed: her upward gaze and his
fused together as if outside
all at once was void
and what millions had seen and done and borne
compressed in her: just her and him;
beholder and beheld, eye and eye’s delight
no otherwhere but here. Look:
it is startling. And it startled them both.

Then the angel sang his song.

Recorded live in the Chapel of St John’s College, Cambridge, 23 March 2023.  Sung by (S) Katherine Gregory, Hannah Dienes-Williams, Emily Callow, Emily India Evans, Susanna Mackay, Helena Paish; (A) Alec D’Oyly, Alice Hilder-Jarvis, Alasdair Austin, Sophie Williams; (T) Louis Watkins, Joseph Hancock, Carlos Rodríguez Otero; (B) Benedict Randall Shaw, Max Todes, Henry Montgomery, Jack Harris, Jonathan Hatley, Greg Bannan.  Directed by George Herbert.

The Angel and the Unicorn

One of my settings of Rowan Williams' poetry. I was lucky enough to meet him at a concert in December 2019, at which my setting of his 'Advent Calendar' was performed, and was delighted when he said it was 'a wonderful setting' and, of all the settings of the words, the closest in feeling to his original poem. I asked if I could set others of his poems, and he kindly agreed. 'One day, God walked in' is the result. The poem it sets, 'Rublev', describes the famous medieval icon-painter Andrei Rublev's depiction of the Trinity:

One day, God walked in, pale from the grey steppe,
slit-eyed against the wind, and stopped,
said, Colour me, breathe your blood into my mouth.

I said, Here is the blood of all our people,
these are their bruises, blue and purple,
gold, brown, and pale green wash of death.

These (god) are the chromatic pains of flesh,
I said, I trust I make you blush,
O I shall stain you with the scars of birth

For ever. I shall root you in the wood,
under the sun shall bake you bread
of beechmast, never let you forth

to the white desert, to the starving sand.
But we shall sit and speak around
one table, share one food, one earth.

Recorded live in the Chapel of St John’s College, Cambridge, 23 March 2023.  Sung by (S) Katherine Gregory, Hannah Dienes-Williams, Emily Callow, Emily India Evans, Susanna Mackay, Helena Paish; (A) Alec D’Oyly, Alice Hilder-Jarvis, Alasdair Austin, Sophie Williams; (T) Louis Watkins, Joseph Hancock, Carlos Rodríguez Otero; (B) Benedict Randall Shaw, Max Todes, Henry Montgomery, Jack Harris, Jonathan Hatley, Greg Bannan.  Directed by George Herbert.

One day, God walked In

A setting of Rilke’s poem on the Visitation, which I also translated.  The words are:

She found the going easy to begin with,
yet sometimes even then on the climb she became 
aware of her body, that miracle of form –
before she stood, catching her breath, on the lofty

hills of Judea. It was not the landscape, but
her own abundance spread about her;
she’d felt it as she walked: one could never
exceed that magnitude which now she sensed.

And it drove her to press her hand
upon that other body, which was further on.
And as each woman swayed towards the other,
their robes and hair entwined.

Each a sanctum replete,
shielding herself with her kin.
The Saviour was still a bud within,
yet the Baptist, enraptured in her cousin’s womb,
could not but leap for joy.

Recorded live in the Chapel of St John’s College, Cambridge, 23 March 2023.  Sung by (S) Katherine Gregory, Hannah Dienes-Williams, Emily Callow, Emily India Evans, Susanna Mackay, Helena Paish; (A) Alec D’Oyly, Alice Hilder-Jarvis, Alasdair Austin, Sophie Williams; (T) Louis Watkins, Joseph Hancock, Carlos Rodríguez Otero; (B) Benedict Randall Shaw, Max Todes, Henry Montgomery, Jack Harris, Jonathan Hatley, Greg Bannan.  Directed by George Herbert.

Each a sanctum replete

One of my settings of Rowan Williams' poetry. I was lucky enough to meet him at a concert in December 2019, at which my setting of his 'Advent Calendar' was performed, and was delighted when he said it was 'a wonderful setting' and, of all the settings of the words, the closest in feeling to his original poem. I asked if I could set others of his poems, and he kindly agreed. 'To Our Lady' is the result. The poem it sets, 'Our Lady of Vladimir', describes the famous 12th-century Russian icon:

Climbs the child, confident,
up over breast, arm, shoulder;
while she, alarmed by his bold thrust
into her face, and the encircling hand,
looks out imploring fearfully
and, O, she cries, from her immeasurable eyes,
O how he clings, see how
he smothers every pore, like the soft
shining mistletoe to my black bark,
she says, I cannot breathe, my eyes
are aching so.

The child has overlaid us in our beds,
we cannot close our eyes,
his weight sits firmly,
fits over heart and lungs,
and choked we turn away
into the window of immeasurable dark
to shake off the insistent pushing warmth;
O how he cleaves, no peace
tonight my lady in your bower,
you, like us, restless with bruised eyes
and waking to

a shining cry on the black bark of sleep.

Recorded live in the Chapel of St John’s College, Cambridge, 23 March 2023.  Sung by (S) Katherine Gregory, Hannah Dienes-Williams, Emily Callow, Emily India Evans, Susanna Mackay, Helena Paish; (A) Alec D’Oyly, Alice Hilder-Jarvis, Alasdair Austin, Sophie Williams; (T) Louis Watkins, Joseph Hancock, Carlos Rodríguez Otero; (B) Benedict Randall Shaw, Max Todes, Henry Montgomery, Jack Harris, Jonathan Hatley, Greg Bannan.  Directed by George Herbert.

To Our Lady

A setting of a poem by Rowan Williams from 2006.  My idea in the setting was that each voice that comes in represents another door being opened on the calendar.  Scores are available from Encore Publications (https://encorepublications.com/publications.shtml#beattie_s).

He will come like last leaf's fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to the bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud's folding.


He will come like frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
opens on mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
of alien, sword-set beauty.


He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-snowed fields of sky.


He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like child.

Broadcast by the Choir of St John's College, Cambridge, on Advent Sunday 2008.  Directed by Andrew Nethsingha.

Advent Calendar

This was an experiment in using a cantus firmus within a modern musical idiom, from 2007. The chant itself comes from a setting by the Renaissance composer Pedro de Cristo, which I decided to pair with words from Lancelot Andrewes’ Christmas sermon for 1622. T. S. Eliot used them, too, of course, for the opening of ‘Journey of the Magi’. Many readers probably do not realise that the words at the beginning of the poem are not Eliot’s own, but there is a clue: he puts them in quotation marks.  If you would like to see a copy of the score, please e-mail me: simon@simonbeattie.co.uk.

Recorded live at St Augustine’s, Kilburn, on 21 January 2019.  Sung by (S) Emma Brain-Gabbott, Amy Carson, Katy Hill, Kirsty Hopkins; (A) Patrick Craig, Caroline Trevor, Hannah Cooke, Chris Field; (T) Mark Dobell, Will Balkwill, George Pooley, Adam Tunnicliffe; (B) Edward Grint, Tim Jones, Jimmy Holliday, Stuart Young.  Directed by Simon Johnson.

Unknown album (18/02/2019 08:22:51)

Magi viderunt stellam

I wrote this in 2009 for the senior choir of a local girls’ school, an ensemble of about 45 voices. I’d heard them perform other pieces, and thought they might enjoy something a little more modern, and in more parts. The text itself is a selection of verses from the poem ‘Christmasse Day’ by Joseph Beaumont (1616–1699).  If you would like to see a copy of the score, please contact me at simon@simonbeattie.co.uk.

Recorded live at St Augustine’s, Kilburn, on 21 January 2019.  Sung by Emma Brain-Gabbott, Amy Carson, Katy Hill, Kirsty Hopkins, Patrick Craig, Caroline Trevor, Hannah Cooke, and Chris Field.  Directed by Simon Johnson.

The Little One

I chanced upon Bernard O’Donoghue’s short poem ‘Christmas’ in 2008, in the same anthology as Rowan Williams’s ‘Advent Calendar’ (see my setting, also on Soundcloud). I wanted to write a rich, sonorous work for men’s voices, and perhaps a Christmas piece that wasn’t particularly religious.  If you would like to see a copy of the score, please contact me at simon@simonbeattie.co.uk.

Despite the forecast’s promise,
It didn’t snow that night;
But in the morning, flakes began
To glide all right.
Not enough to cover roads
Or even hide the grass;
But enough to change the light.

Recorded live at St Augustine’s, Kilburn, on 21 January 2019.  Sung by Mark Dobell, Will Balkwill, George Pooley, Adam Tunnicliffe, Edward Grint, Tim Jones, Jimmy Holliday, and Stuart Young.  Directed by Simon Johnson.

Snow for Christmas

This work (2018) was inspired by Christina Rossetti’s extraordinary sonnet ‘Remember’ (she wrote it in 1849, when still a teenager; it was only finally published in 1862), now seen as a classic Victorian poem of mourning and remembrance.  If you would like to see a copy of the score, please contact me at simon@simonbeattie.co.uk.

Remember me when I am gone away, 
         Gone far away into the silent land; 
         When you can no more hold me by the hand, 
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay. 
Remember me when no more day by day 
         You tell me of our future that you plann'd: 
         Only remember me; you understand 
It will be late to counsel then or pray. 
Yet if you should forget me for a while 
         And afterwards remember, do not grieve: 
         For if the darkness and corruption leave 
         A vestige of the thoughts that once I had, 
Better by far you should forget and smile 
         Than that you should remember and be sad.

Recorded live at St Augustine’s, Kilburn, on 21 January 2019.  Sung by Patrick Craig, Caroline Trevor, Hannah Cooke, Chris Field, Mark Dobell, Will Balkwill, George Pooley, Adam Tunnicliffe, Edward Grint, Tim Jones, Jimmy Holliday, and Stuart Young.  Directed by Simon Johnson.

Remember me

This is dedicated to the memory of my grandfather, who was a gardener, and was written in 2005. He died in 1991, after which I wrote the poem sung here by the upper voices. When I set it, I decided to meld my words with those of Genesis chapter 2, verses 7–8: ‘And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.  And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden [“paradisum”]; and there he put the man whom he had formed.’ The title for the piece comes from Francis Bacon’s 1625 essay ‘Of Gardens’: ‘God Almighty first planted a garden; and, indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures; it is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man …’  If you would like to see a copy of the score, please contact me at simon@simonbeattie.co.uk.

Recorded live at St Augustine’s, Kilburn, on 21 January 2019.  Sung by (S) Emma Brain-Gabbott, Amy Carson, Katy Hill, Kirsty Hopkins; (A) Patrick Craig, Caroline Trevor, Hannah Cooke, Chris Field; (T) Mark Dobell, Will Balkwill, George Pooley, Adam Tunnicliffe; (B) Edward Grint, Tim Jones, Jimmy Holliday, Stuart Young.  Directed by Simon Johnson.

The Greatest Refreshment

Composed in 2009.  The text for the third of these was one of the readings at our wedding. Having discovered it, I read more of Heine’s work, and found two more poems of his I wanted to set.If you would like to see a copy of the score, please contact me at simon@simonbeattie.co.uk.

The stars, for many ages,
Have dwelt in heav'n above,
They gaze at one another 
Tormented by their love.

They speak the richest language,
The loveliest ever heard;
Yet none of all the linguists
Can understand a word.

I learned it, though, in lessons
That nothing can erase;
The only text I needed
Was my beloved's face.

Recorded live at St Augustine’s, Kilburn, on 21 January 2019.  Sung by (S) Emma Brain-Gabbott, Amy Carson, Katy Hill, Kirsty Hopkins; (A) Patrick Craig, Caroline Trevor, Hannah Cooke, Chris Field; (T) Mark Dobell, Will Balkwill, George Pooley, Adam Tunnicliffe; (B) Edward Grint, Tim Jones, Jimmy Holliday, Stuart Young.  Directed by Simon Johnson.

Three Heine Love Songs 3: Exercise in Love

Composed in 2009.  The text for the third of these was one of the readings at our wedding. Having discovered it, I read more of Heine’s work, and found two more poems of his I wanted to set.If you would like to see a copy of the score, please contact me at simon@simonbeattie.co.uk.

Songless I was, immersed in mourning,
Now song, at last the gloom disperses;
Like tears that come with ne'er a warning,
So without warning come the verses.

Once more melodic strains are starting
To sing of great love, greater anguish,
Of hearts that have to break at parting,
And hearts that only live to languish.

Recorded live at St Augustine’s, Kilburn, on 21 January 2019.  Sung by (S) Emma Brain-Gabbott, Amy Carson, Katy Hill, Kirsty Hopkins; (A) Patrick Craig, Caroline Trevor, Hannah Cooke, Chris Field; (T) Mark Dobell, Will Balkwill, George Pooley, Adam Tunnicliffe; (B) Edward Grint, Tim Jones, Jimmy Holliday, Stuart Young.  Directed by Simon Johnson.

Three Heine Love Songs 2: Songless

Composed in 2009.  The text for the third of these was one of the readings at our wedding. Having discovered it, I read more of Heine’s work, and found two more poems of his I wanted to set.If you would like to see a copy of the score, please contact me at simon@simonbeattie.co.uk.

The rose, the lily, the sun, and the dove,
I love them all once in the rapture of love.
I love them no more, for my sole delight
Is a maiden so slight, so bright and so white
Who, being herself the source of love
Is rose and lily and sun and dove.

Recorded live at St Augustine’s, Kilburn, on 21 January 2019.  Sung by (S) Emma Brain-Gabbott, Amy Carson, Katy Hill, Kirsty Hopkins; (A) Patrick Craig, Caroline Trevor, Hannah Cooke, Chris Field; (T) Mark Dobell, Will Balkwill, George Pooley, Adam Tunnicliffe; (B) Edward Grint, Tim Jones, Jimmy Holliday, Stuart Young.  Directed by Simon Johnson.

Three Heine Love Songs 1: Rose, Lily, Sun, Dove

I had wanted to set this poem for a long time. I first came across it when Carol Ann Duffy was made Poet Laureate, in 2009. I had never read any of her work when her appointment was announced, and was pleasantly surprised when I found, on a transatlantic flight, that Juliet Stevenson reading her collection Rapture was among British Airways’ inflight entertainment choices. I was flying to the US for a week, away from home, and the poem resonated—and stayed—with me.

On the other side of the world,
you pass the moon to me,
like a loving cup,
or a quaich.
I roll you the sun.

I go to bed,
as you’re getting up
on the other side of the world.
You have scattered the stars
towards me here, like seeds

in the earth.
All through the night,
I have sent you
bunches, bouquets, of cloud
to the other side of the world;

so my love will be shade
where you are,
and yours,
as I turn in my sleep,
the bud of a star.

Recorded live at St Augustine’s, Kilburn, on 21 January 2019.  Sung by (S) Emma Brain-Gabbott, Amy Carson, Katy Hill, Kirsty Hopkins; (A) Patrick Craig, Caroline Trevor, Hannah Cooke, Chris Field; (T) Mark Dobell, Will Balkwill, George Pooley, Adam Tunnicliffe; (B) Edward Grint, Tim Jones, Jimmy Holliday, Stuart Young.  Directed by Simon Johnson.

The World to me

I wrote the words here in 2014, for a local poetry competition. Four years later, I was performing in a concert with a First World War theme, so I decided to set my own words. I had also been involved in some local history research, and was fascinated by the story of Sydney Lacey, who left Buckinghamshire for Australia shortly before the War only to come back to Europe and die on the Western Front. Amazingly, he was fighting just down the line from the Bucks Battalion, and one wonders if he knew any of the other Buckinghamshire men who died at Fromelles. If you would like to see a copy of the score, please contact me at simon@simonbeattie.co.uk.

The flow of men four years before turns
Trickle
Coming back
To town and village
Lives worn thin 
With worry 
Loved ones wait.

Strange arrivals these,
These boys brought up too soon
To witness horror there, now
Coming back
To town and village, where
Life wears on.
Their fate:

Man memorials.
Grey faces,
Grave looks
For the living.
Grey stone,
Graven names
For the dead.

Recorded live at St Augustine’s, Kilburn, on 21 January 2019.  Sung by (S) Emma Brain-Gabbott, Amy Carson, Katy Hill, Kirsty Hopkins; (A) Patrick Craig, Caroline Trevor, Hannah Cooke, Chris Field; (T) Mark Dobell, Will Balkwill, George Pooley, Adam Tunnicliffe; (B) Edward Grint, Tim Jones, Jimmy Holliday, Stuart Young.  Directed by Simon Johnson.

A Remembrance

Written for the Pearce Singers, who were going to be singing the services at Ely Cathedral this August.  The tenors sing a cantus firmus using the original Latin words of the hymn; I have used J. M. Neale's English translation for the other voices.  Neale is remembered by the Church of England on 7 August, when the Pearce Singers were due to be singing at Ely.

Before the ending of the day,
Creator of the world, we pray
That with Thy wonted favour thou
Wouldst be our Guard and Keeper now.

From all ill dreams defend our eyes,
From nightly fears and fantasies;
Tread underfoot our ghostly foe,
That no pollution we may not know.

O Father, that we ask be done,
Through Jesus Christ, thine only Son,
Who, with the Holy Ghost and thee,
Doth live and reign eternally.

Amen.

Te lucis ante terminum

My first Rowan Williams setting, from 2006, since when it has enjoyed a number of performances, on both sides of the Atlantic, and been broadcast on BBC Radio 3.  The recording here is from January 2019.  Scores are available from Encore Publications (https://encorepublications.com/publications.shtml#beattie_s).

He will come like last leaf’s fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to the bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud’s folding.

He will come like frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
opens on mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
of alien, sword-set beauty.

He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-snowed fields of sky.

He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like child.

Recorded live at St Augustine’s, Kilburn, on 21 January 2019.  Sung by (S) Emma Brain-Gabbott, Amy Carson, Katy Hill, Kirsty Hopkins; (A) Patrick Craig, Caroline Trevor, Hannah Cooke, Chris Field; (T) Mark Dobell, Will Balkwill, George Pooley, Adam Tunnicliffe; (B) Edward Grint, Tim Jones, Jimmy Holliday, Stuart Young.  Directed by Simon Johnson.

Bookseller, translator, composer.  Old books, new music.

Simon Beattie

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