The Ice is Listening (2023)

Soprano solo, SATB, & piano/chamber orchestra

Duration: 16′
Oxford University Press
Commissioned by Henley Choral Society
First performance 1 April, 2023, Henley Choral Society | Richard Harker, conductor | St Mary’s Church, Henley, Oxfordshire, UK
Commissioned to celebrate Henley Choral Society’s 50th anniversary.

We live in times when ice is increasingly under threat, causing sea levels to rise and rivers to surge. The Ice is Listening sets evocative poetry by Kate Wakeling around the theme of ice: from the nostalgia of 17th century frost fairs to a reflection on today’s climate crisis, with concern for an uncertain future

Programme note:

The Ice is Listening

Cecilia McDowall (music)

Kate Wakeling (words)

1. Solid Waters
2. The ice is listening
3. Moulin

Finding that good starting point for any commission is an exciting process and Henley Choral Society’s suggestion of creating a cantata about the River Thames provided a wonderful ‘way in’ to explore a rich reservoir of ideas. My thoughts turned to ice. We live in times when ice is increasingly under threat, causing sea levels to rise and rivers to surge. I thought of times past, when frost fairs were not uncommon, occurring intermittently up to 1814. And then again, I found my thoughts turning to the future, and how scarce it seems ice might become.

Kate Wakeling has created a rich text for this work. Her poetry conveys the colour and vibrancy of the Frost Fairs on the Thames, London, alongside a deep insight into how the ice is shifting and diminishing; her text shows us how things once were, how they are now, and how they might be. This is not a cantata about ‘winter’; rather, it is a cantata for all time, a reminder that ice is a precious resource, something to treasure and hope we never lose.

Of the first movement, ‘Solid Waters’, Kate writes:

The text is drawn from a wonderful seventeenth-century manuscript that I found in the Old Library of Magdalene College, Oxford. Written by an anonymous source, An Historical Account of the Late Great Frost (1684) describes in marvellous detail the Frost Fair of 1683–4, when the Thames froze solid and all manner of ‘Roasting, Boyling, Eating, Drinking [and] Rejoycing’ took place on its surface.

The movement opens with great activity as ‘people began to walk upon the ice’ and repeated -note patterns on ‘weather’ represent the chattering of teeth. This spirited, vivacious mood is countered by more thoughtful moments; away from the clamour and bustle on the ice there is another world – one of quietness, cold, and hunger.

I feel the second movement will bring an air of regret and loss; it is a lament for the ice we have now but one day, we may have no more. Kate writes:

The text for this movement, ‘The ice is listening’, takes as its starting point a quote from the climate scientist Josh Willis—‘When the ocean speaks, the Greenland Ice Sheet listens’—and explores the impending loss of this ice sheet, paying close attention to the extraordinary amount of ‘history’ locked in the deepest ice here that will so swiftly vanish into air.

The choir is joined by a soprano soloist singing of the ice which ‘has borne time without complaint’. But now water challenges the integrity of ice which ‘is pressed at last to speak’. The chorus supports the soloist, perhaps in the fashion of a Greek chorus commenting on the unfolding of a tragedy.

Of the text in the third movement, Kate writes:

‘Moulin’, expresses something of the dynamism of these strange, magnificent waterfalls within the ice, and seeks to conjure up both their beauty and the threat they pose.

This movement presses on relentlessly, rather in the manner of a perpetuum mobile. Kate’s poetry brings colour to this icy propulsion and I have made play with the words ‘dizzy’ and ‘dazzle’ as if they fall downwards into a watery chasm or ‘moulin’ below. Often there is an expectation that a work of this kind might bring a note of optimism in its final moments but I feel we face such an uncertain future that it seems more in keeping to offer something quieter, more contemplative, perhaps even a little unsettling. In the final bars the lower strings drum their fingers on the body of their instruments in an uneasy undelay as the notes fade away.
This work was commissioned by Henley Choral Society, Richard Harker, conductor, and first performed on 1 April, 2023 at St Mary’s Church, Henley.

Cecilia McDowall, 2023

1. Solid Waters

Text drawn from ‘An Historical Account of the Late Great Frost’ (London: D. Brown & J. Waltho, 1684)

and the river

was all Frozen

the hardest

Weather set in

Tyrannous,

the Frost

altered the

Ancient Government

of this Stream

bound its

Liquid course

to Rigid Laws

and People began

to walk upon

the Ice

a street of Booths

was built

behold

the thriving Trader

at his Shop

the Sportive

at their Recreations

in all places

Smoaking Fires

on the Solid Waters

Roasting, Boyling,

Eating, Drinking,

others Chariotted

and Coach’d about

nothing heard

but rejoycing intermixt

with Drums

and Trumpets

nothing heard

in the fields

nothing heard

in the fields

starved with Cold

here the severity of the season

bore sway

we are taught the Truth

we must Tread backwards

2. The Ice is Listening

‘When the ocean speaks, the Greenland Ice Sheet listens’ –– Josh Willis, climate scientist and Principal Investigator of the ‘Oceans Melting Greenland’ mission, 2021.

The ice is listening.

Unblinking,

it waits.

The ice would only hold

its tongue.

So long

it has borne time

without complaint;

history soothed

and made still

by spotless cold

but now the waters

fret at its sides

and the ice

is pressed

at last

to speak.

Sunk low,

for shame,

the ice gives itself up

and everything

is spilled.

3. Moulin

‘Moulins are the conduits that allow water melting on the surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet to drain to its base and cause the ice to flow faster. Forming a moulin in Greenland requires a crack on the surface that becomes filled with enough water to drive the crack all the way through the ice’ –– ‘Widespread Moulin Formation During Supraglacial Lake Drainages in Greenland’, Hoffman et al. Geophysical Research Letters, 2018.

crick crack

seep and swell

the water is a fist

that splits the surface

makes its gaping way

by swerve and tumble

gush and roll

to dizzy and set smooth

and all above the rivers run

shrill and terrific

how they rally now to the open mouth

then flush on and down

through maze of noise and blue

what thrall

what bright ruin is this rushing place

what untethering of thaw and dazzle

that would sweep the earth clean

Kate Wakeling (2023)