My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?

for SATB Choir & Baritone Soloist

Performed by Harry Bradford (conductor), Humphrey Thompson (soloist) & Novaura Choir in the chapel of Clare College, Cambridge, on February 3rd 2016.

My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?

Dark Across A Darkening Sky (2016)
for countertenor & baritone soloists with mixed ensemble

Performed by Rupert Scarratt, James Jenkins & The KCMS Contemporary Music Ensemble, conducted by the composer.

Dark Across A Darkening Sky

De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine;
Lord, hear my voice.
Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy.

Performed by the Bruckner Singers, conducted by Kavi Pau, in the Chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge.

De profundis

The point of departure for this piece was the blending of colours in the sky as the sun rises at dawn: constant gradual change of colour that achieves a progression to something new via several recognisably different regions. This piece treats this idea less programmatically than as a metaphor that underlies the structure of the music. Thus, it moves slowly through a gradual progression of spectra, from a highly inharmonic collection to a fully harmonic one at the conclusion of the piece. On the way, various interpolated spectra are explored through the gradual melding of different instrumental colours and combinations.

Rose Light Enflamed The Eastern Sky

When The Rain Came, performed by Joseph Zubier & Donal McCann

It seems I have no tears left. They should have fallen -
their ghosts, if tears have ghosts, did fall,
Are forever smearing the air with grief.

Then the rain came, like stammered kisses at first
on the back of my neck. I turned up my face,
And water flooded my mouth, baptised my head.
Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain,
and solitude, and me.

But nebulous and tremulous through the tears
that filled my eyes, your face appeared to me;

O God! You too are crying
As if a world were dying.
It is a world that is for us the whole world, the only world,

But, though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
All was washed clean with the flood.
Since, with the tears you sense a touch of peace
through a bright cloud of tears,
and should some why completely weep

And the rain clouds gathered like midnight overhead,
And the rain came down like a lover comes to bed.

Joshua Ballance

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