Songs of the North (2026)
SSATB and piano
Text: John Challis (North); Catherine Ayres (Notes made on Hadrian’s Wall); Ian Stuart (Journey North) These three poems can be found on the Poem of the North website:
https://poemofthenorth.co.uk/
Duration: 12 minutes
Commissioned by Newcastle Bach Choir to celebrate Eric Cross’s 40th anniversary as conductor
I North
II Notes made on Hadrian’s Wall
III Journey North
Songs of the North sets three texts from ‘Poem of the North’, a poetic collaboration celebrating 50 years of the Northern Poetry Library. As part of the project, poems were written with a new ‘821’ form: a structure characterized by 11-line, three-stanza poems that employ the ‘volta’ concept to subtly interconnect series of stanzas. The work’s celebration of Northern English writing begins with ‘North’, a flowing and forward-moving movement that reflects the poet’s consideration of north as ‘a progressive direction’. The second movement, ‘Notes made on Hadrian’s Wall’, has a folk-like simplicity and integrates the folk song ‘Waters of Tyne’ into the texture. Additionally, the poem’s references to the Sycamore Gap tree are given greater poignance following its illegal felling in 2023. The final movement, ‘Journey North’, has a rhythmic drive that evokes an exciting train journey through a fast-changing landscape.
Programme Note:
Songs of the North Cecilia McDowall
I. North
2. Notes made on Hadrian’s Wall
3. Journey North
These three poems, North, Notes made on Hadrian’s Wall and Journey North were written as part of a poetic concept, ‘Poem of the North’, created by Lisa Matthews to celebrate 50 years of the Northern Poetry Library, established in Morpeth, Northumberland in 1968. The library hosts the largest collection of post-World War II poetry in England outside London, home to constellations of finely-tuned, often moving and sometimes unnerving words.
Lisa Matthews writes, ‘the Poem of the North’ brings together the work of the fifty selected poets, in five cantos, published over a period of six months. By the end of 2018, the completed poem stands as a celebratory artefact: a tribute to the region and acknowledgement of the North’s rich seam of writers and written culture.’
The concept behind Poem of the North is that each poem is based on a new poetic form … 8-2-1 … a form devised by Lisa Matthews as a tribute to the poetry section of libraries. The 821 poetic form is an 11-line, 3-stanza structure which draws its inspiration from the number assigned to English poetry in the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system. Secondly, 821 utilises the “volta”, a concept traditionally associated with sonnets and used to create a subtly interconnected series of stanzas that turn or riff off one another.
Songs of the North, for mixed chorus and piano, was commissioned by the Newcastle Bach Choir to celebrate Eric Cross’ 40th anniversary as conductor. John Challis’ North is the first poem in this new work and he writes that his poem ‘considers north as a progressive direction’. The text gives a real sense of always moving onwards and holding the idea of ‘north’ close. Catherine Ayres’ poem, Notes made on Hadrian’s Wall has a spare quality about it; silence, a vast sky above the ‘shadow spine’ of the wall and a deep sense of history. The words, ‘I mean nothing, almost sucked towards the sycamore’s crown,’ are particularly poignant in the light of the wanton destruction of the Sycamore Gap tree. I have given this movement a simple ‘folk-like feel and integrated the folk song, Waters of Tyne, into the texture. The rhythmic drive of final poem, Journey North by Ian Stuart suggests an exciting train journey through a fast-changing landscape, pausing for a moment to observe ‘a blaze of sunflowers’, their faces raised ‘to the silent sky.’
Read more on the Poem of the North site
North
Imagine it not as a point to reach – for all ways
are equal to the compass – nor as a place,
since there is always north of north – go far enough
you’ll find yourself back where you began –
but as the sense of moving forwards, going up,
going heavenwards, through the cold
and through the clouds, the ultimate ascent towards
whatever keeps you up, be it fame or love
or hunger to know what’s around the corner,
up the street or at the border: what matters
most is keeping north, and keeping north inside. © 2018, John Challis
Notes made on Hadrian’s Wall
Sly light and silence. The sky unfolds.
When the lark spools, an old yearning is washed clean.
I stand on the wall to squint its distant line. Wall as dormant god,
wall as watcher, wall as shadow spine, wall as lost ribbon in the wind.
I mean nothing, almost sucked towards the sycamore’s crown.
The fort is drowned and the women further under.
At Harrow’s Scar, spleenwort crawls
through mottled stone.
Does the hairpin hold a seed or a star?
Both are trinkets pressed into a palm.
At dusk swallows twitch through empty rooms. © 2018, Catherine Ayres
Journey North
Skyline waving like a banner
tugging folds and wrinkles straight,
vaulting bridges, shadowed valleys
plunge into the tunnel’s maw and then –
A bight out of the land, a crescent shore
of splintered shoals and rocks
gnawed by the breakers, rank on rank –
a hunch-backed cottage clenched against the cold
and in a scratched out garden by the beach,
raising their faces to the silent sky
a blaze of sunflowers. © 2018, Ian Stuart
Link to OUP website
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
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)
A cappella SSATB
Commissioned by Magdalen College School, Oxford
First performance 3 July, 2009 | The Choir of Magdalen College School | Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford
Commissioned in the year of Haydn’s bi-centenary to celebrate his visit to Oxford.
Thy voice, o Harmony, is divine was commissioned by Magdalen College School to celebrate the Bicentenary of Haydn’s death and the composer’s association with Oxford. It was first performed on 1 July 2009 by the Oxford Sixth Choir, conductor Jon Cullen, in the Sheldonian Theatre Oxford as part of the MCS Arts Festival. Also performed at the same concert were works by Handel and Haydn’s Missa in Angustiis (Nelson Mass) by the Hanover Band, conductor Paul Brough.
The London premiere was given by the Esterhazy Singers, conductor Esther Jones, on 4 November 2009 at St Giles Cripplegate, Barbican, London.
This work is inspired by a little piece written by Haydn for the award ceremony in the Sheldonian Theatre at which he received his honorary doctorate from Oxford University. Haydn’s Canzone à tre was composed as a round in a clever setting of the words, Thy voice, o Harmony, is divine, which could be turned upside down and sung backwards, simultaneously. The words are attributed to the Haydn.
The phrase shapes of this motet, Thy voice, o Harmony, is divine, derive in some way from Haydn’s Canzone, unfolding and overlapping between the voices. The central section presents a homophonic reference to the Haydn’s round with text and notes set in palindromic fashion. The conclusion of the motet dissolves into repeated, lingering phrases which melt into the air. The text is taken from the Haydn Canzone.
SATB & organ
Text: Seán Street
Duration: 4′
Oxford University Press
Commissioned by Magdelen College School for the Commeroration of Benefactors
First performance 2 July 2016 | University Church, Oxford, UK | Jon Cullen, conductor
This joyous, upbeat anthem sets a compelling poem by contemporary poet Seán Street in response to a text by sixteenth-century Bishop of Norwich John Parkhurst on the subject of ‘alma mater’.
Programme note
Review available
Link to Score:
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-loving-memory-9780193514461
Link to recording:
