for soprano and ensemble (2019-2020)​​

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text by Oliver Cromwell, Andrew Marvell, William Wordsworth, and from the Book of Ezekiel

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flute (= piccolo)—oboe—clarinet in A—horn—percussion—piano—harp—strings (1.1.1.1.1)

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Commissioned by the Mahler Foundation with generous funds from William L. Richter, Santa Cruz (California).

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World premiere: 17 May 2025, Het Concertgebouw Amsterdam, as part of Het Concertgebouw's Mahler Festival 2025. New European Ensemble, Keren Motseri (soprano) and John Warner (conductor).

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You can buy a score of The Mosaique of the Aire from SOUNZ Centre for New Zealand Music, available here. 

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Image: the world premiere at Het Concertgebouw on 17 May 2025. Image: © Gabriel Hollander

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The Mosaique of the Aire was written in 2019-2020 as I was finishing my studies in London. The piece weaves together fragments of texts from (mostly) English sources. The idea, itself a nod to Mahler’s work, was to combine images of anarchy and devastation with more poetical representations of nature’s beauty. The piece explores the representations of nature within a fanatical, authoritarian system (in this case, Christian): simultaneously violent and apocalyptic, introspective and meditative. After passing through this series of images, the piece ends on a more contemporary note of deep pessimism. 

 

The piece is organised into five movements that play without pause: 

 

Part I

A kind of wild Handelian aria with whirling winds and jarring percussion.

 

Part II

A moment of repose, setting lines from Andrew Marvell’s The Garden. 

 

Part III

An instrumental interlude, loosely evocative of the representation of landscape in late Romantic music.

 

Part IV

A slow movement, continuing the setting of excerpts from Marvell’s poem. 

 

Part V

A finale which, out of fragments of moments past, gradually reassembles the whirling music of the piece’s opening. 

 

The Mosaique of the Aire was commissioned by the Mahler Foundation as a companion piece to Mahler’s Fourth Symphony for the Mahler Festival in 2020. Delayed by the pandemic, I have a made a few minor revisions to the piece for the new premiere.

 

I would like to thank a number of people for their generous and tireless support in bringing this piece to life, above all Marina Mahler, George Benjamin and John Warner. 

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TEXT

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Part I—Parliament

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from Ezekiel                 And when I shall put thee out, I will cover the heaven, and make the stars thereof dark;—

from Cromwell            Dissension in a country in civil war!—

from Ezekiel                 I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give her light.

from Cromwell            Dissension, division, destruction.

 

Part II—The garden at Appleton House, mid-17th century

 

from Marvell              Fair Quiet, have I found thee here, 

                                        And Innocence, thy sister dear! 

                                        Mistaken long, I sought you then 

                                        In busy companies of men; 

            

                                        Society is all but rude, 

                                        To this delicious solitude. 

 

                                        What wondr’ous life in this I lead! 

 

Part III—Simplon Pass

 

Part IV—Appleton House, moments later

 

from Marvell               Meanwhile the Mind, from pleasure less,

                                        Withdraws into its happiness: 

                                        The Mind, that Ocean where each kind

                                        Does straight its own resemblance find;

                                        Yet it creates, transcending these,

                                        Far other Worlds, and other Seas; 

                                        Annihilating all that’s made

                                        To a green thought in a green Shade.

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Part V—Simplon Pass; later, by a river covered in thick foam

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from Wordsworth      Were all like workings of one mind, the features

                                        Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree,

                                        Characters of the great Apocalypse,

                                        The types and symbols of Eternity,

                                        Of first and last, and midst, and without end.

 

Text by the composer   But when the sun does rise, three figures bathe

                                        in bulbous clouds of billowing white scum.

 

 

Excluding the last two lines, the text is taken from the following sources: Oliver Cromwell, Speech to the Second Protecorate Parliament, (25th January 1657); Ezekiel 72:3 (King James Bible); Andrew Marvell, The Garden, 9-12, 15-16, 33, 41-48; William Wordsworth, The Prelude, VI, 571-575. 

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