On Saturday 8 November the Exeter Philharmonic Choir, conductor Howard Ionascu and Bristol Ensemble will give the first performance of Cecilia McDowall’scantata, ‘The Weather Book‘, a joint commission with top Swedish chamber choir, the Gustaf Vasa Kammarkör.
‘The Weather Book‘, a three movement 20-minute cantata, which explores the history of weather and meteorology, was written especially for the EPC by one of the UK’s leading contemporary composers and highlights Exeter’s unique status as the home of the UK’s Met Office.
The first movement of The Weather Book, ‘Celsius Rising’, was performed by the Gustaf Vasa Kammarkör, conductor Lars Fredén, in March 2025 in their home city of Stockholm. Swedish soprano Agnes Auer will be coming to Exeter to give the première of the entire work, with the addition of the second and third movements composed especially for EPC. It was sheer chance that the two choirs approached Cecilia at the same time to commission a bespoke work. The result is a composition that links the two countries through reference to aspects of the history of the weather and meteorology.
Cecilia’s inspiration for the joint commission was to link the UK and Sweden through references to climate. She worked with poet and librettist Kate Wakeling to discover different aspects of weather-related topics. Cecilia says, “Swedish scientist Anders Celsius was my first thought, although I had only been aware of his name in connection with his establishing the centigrade temperature scale. But my wonderful poet and librettist, Kate Wakeling, discovered so much more about this remarkable man whose scientific work spanned many other interests, including a detailed study of the Northern Lights. This led him to make a ground-breaking connection between the Aurora Borealis and changes in the magnetic field of the Earth.
“Kate also drew attention to Celsius’ belief in the need for ‘extensive scientific data, collected methodically and over long periods, a somewhat radical approach in his day. It was a fortuitous discovery that Exeter Philharmonic Choir is based in the home city of the UK’s Meteorological (‘Met’) Office, an institution which holds many important historical archives relating to weather and, in particular, to its founder, Captain Robert FitzRoy. His vessel, the HMS Beagle, took on board two famous men, evolutionist Charles Darwin and Francis Beaufort, creator of the Beaufort Wind Scale. With his naval background, FitzRoy understood the importance of gathering information about the weather at sea to prevent calamity wherever possible. Kate has drawn on FitzRoy’s own ‘Weather Book’ for the last movement of this work.
“She has also found an important source for the middle movement, called ‘History of Air’. In 1856, the American scientist and women’s rights campaigner Eunice Newton Foote conducted a series of experiments that proved for the first time that altering the proportion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere changes its temperature. This relationship between carbon dioxide and the earth’s climate is one of the key principles of modern meteorology and continues to shape our understanding of the greenhouse effect and climate science as a whole.”
