Songs of Sleep and Prophecy
Welcome!
Thank you for joining Leeds Guild of Singers for this concert today. It will be particularly special as we perform the world premiere of Martin Suckling’s Songs of Sleep and Prophecy, a composition we commissioned in memory of David Eaves, a much-loved friend and former bass singer in the Guild, who passed away in 2020. We would at this point like to thank all of you that donated to our crowdfunding campaign for the commission as well as our funders: the Vaughan Williams Foundation, the Hinrichsen Foundation and the Hope Scott Trust.
We would also like to thank Holy Trinity Church for hosting us again. Do have a good look around at some of the amazing stained-glass windows and imagine what the outside of the church would have looked like when it first opened. Back in the year of its inauguration in 1727, you would have walked through fields up from the river to Holy Trinity church and you would have been blinded by the roof which was lined with gilded gold sheep’s fleeces – having been funded by the wealthy wool merchants of Leeds.
Please take a minute to complete the feedback form and put it in the box at the exit. We value your comments, and we’d like to stay in touch to tell you about our future concerts.
Laura Barker-Bey (new Chair of Leeds Guild of Singers)
Programme notes and texts
Media Vita John Sheppard (c.1515 -c.1560)
One of the foremost English composers of the mid-Tudor period, Sheppard served as Informator Choristarum at Magdalen College, Oxford. This magnificent setting of the ancient antiphon Media vita in morte sumus (In the midst of life we are in death) dates from around 1550 and exemplifies the expressive intensity of his mature style. Written for six voices, the work exploits the full Renaissance polyphonic vocabulary with overlapping imitative entries, false relations, and moments of startling harmonic poignancy. The text’s meditation on mortality and plea for divine mercy inspired Sheppard to create music of exceptional emotional power and architectural grandeur.
Text:
Media vita in morte sumus.
quem quaerimus adjutorem
nisi te, Domine,
qui pro peccatis nostris
juste irasceris?
Sancte Deus,
sancte fortis,
sancte et misericors Salvator:
amarae morti ne tradas nos.
In the midst of life we are in death
of whom may we seek for succour,
but of thee, O Lord,
who for our sins
art justly displeased?
Holy God,
Holy mighty,
Holy and merciful Saviour,
deliver us not unto bitter death.
Lullaby for Lucy Sir Peter Maxwell Davies MBE (1934-2016)
Written in 1981 for unaccompanied SATB chorus, this charming work sets George Mackay Brown’s acrostic poem celebrating the birth of Lucy Randall, the first child born in Rackwick, Hoy, for 32 years. Maxwell Davies set himself the unusual constraint of using only white notes on the piano, creating a modal simplicity that serves as a “symbolic conceit”. The music has a gentle rocking rhythm entirely suitable for its lullaby purpose, and the composer enjoyed the tune so much he repeated all the text to hear it twice. This tender work reveals a softer side to Maxwell Davies’s compositional voice, demonstrating his gift for combining technical ingenuity with direct emotional appeal.
Text:
Let all the plants and creatures of the valley now
Unite,
Calling a new
Young one to join the celebration.
Rowan and lamb and waters salt and sweet,
Entreat the
New child to the brimming
Dance of the valley,
A pledge and a promise.
Lonely they were long, the creatures of Rackwick, till
Lucy came among them, all brightness and light.
The Evening-Watch Gustav Holst (1874-1934)
Written in 1924, this sublime eight-part a cappella motet sets words from the Apocrypha (Ecclesiasticus 42:15-16) reflecting on God’s presence in the evening and night. Holst creates a hushed, contemplative atmosphere through his characteristic modal harmonies and gently undulating contrapuntal lines. The voices weave seamlessly between homophonic meditation and subtle imitative entries, with solo lines illustrating the dialogue between body and soul. The piece ends with a surprising burst of sonorous energy.
Text:
(The body)
Farewell! I go to sleep; but, when
The day star springs, I’ll wake again.
(The soul)
Go, sleep in peace; and when thou liest
Unnumbered in thy dust, when all this frame
Is but one dram, and what thou now descriest
In sev’ral parts shall want a name,
Then may his peace be with thee, and each dust
Writ in his book, who ne’er betray’d man’s trust!
(The body)
Amen! but hark, ere we two stray,
How many hours dost think till day?
(The soul)
Ah! go; thou’rt weak and sleepy. Heav’n
Is a plain watch, and without figures winds
All ages up; who drew this circle even
He fills it; days and hours are blinds.
Yet, this take with thee; the last gasp of time
Is thy first breath, and man’s eternal Prime.
Interval
Media vita Kerensa Briggs (born 1991)
An award-winning British composer specialising in choral music, Briggs’s work has been described as “poignant, ambivalent, quietly devastating” by the New York Times. This 2015 setting was commissioned to celebrate 500 years since the birth of John Sheppard, and serves as a contemporary response to his Renaissance masterpiece. Written for eight-part choir, Briggs’s setting draws inspiration from the intensity and ebb and flow found within Sheppard’s work, incorporating false relations and imitative writing into a richer harmonic language and reflective sonority. The piece creates a dialogue across five centuries, honouring the past whilst exploring the ancient text’s meaning through a distinctly modern sensibility that speaks powerfully to contemporary audiences.
Text:
Media vita in morte sumus.
Quem quaerimus adjutorem nisi te, Domine,
qui pro peccatis nostris juste irasceris?
Sancte Deus. Sancte fortis.
Sancte et misericors Salvator,
amarae morti ne tradas nos.
In the midst of life we are in death.
Whom can we seek as our helper, but you, O Lord,
who for our sins are justly angry?
Holy God. Holy and strong.
Holy and merciful Saviour,
deliver us not to the bitter pains of death.
The Gallant Weaver Sir James Macmillan (born 1959)
A leading figure in contemporary British music, MacMillan is renowned for his deeply expressive choral writing that draws on Scottish folk traditions and his Catholic faith. “The Gallant Weaver” sets Robert Burns’s tender love poem in a setting that captures both the folk simplicity of the verse and the emotional complexity beneath its surface. MacMillan’s harmonic language shifts between modal purity and more adventurous chromaticism, whilst his rhythmic vitality brings Burns’s text vividly to life. The piece demonstrates his gift for creating music that is both immediately accessible and richly sophisticated in its craft.
Text:
Where Cart rins rowin’ to the sea,
By mony a flow’r and spreading tree,
There lives a lad, the lad for me,
He is the gallant Weaver.
I love my gallant Weaver.
Oh I had wooers aught or nine,
They gied me rings and ribbons fine,
And I was feared my heart would tine,
And I gied it to the Weaver.
I love my gallant Weaver.
My daddie sign’d my tocher-band
To gie the lad that has the land,
But to my heart I’ll add my hand,
And give it to the Weaver.
I love my gallant Weaver.
While birds rejoice in leafy bowers
While bees delight in op’ning flowers
While corn grows green in simmer showers,
I love my gallant Weaver.
Songs of Farewell:
3. Never Weather-Beaten Sail Sir Hubert H. Parry (1848-1918)
This exquisite motet, published in 1916 as part of Parry’s Songs of Farewell, sets Thomas Campion’s 17th-century poem longing for rest and spiritual homecoming. Written in five voice parts, the work demonstrates Parry’s masterful handling of English text and his ability to blend Renaissance-inspired polyphony with late-Romantic harmonic richness. The gently rocking rhythms evoke the metaphorical voyage described in the text, whilst Parry’s warm chromatic harmony creates moments of yearning beauty, particularly at the phrase “never soul more tried with tedious length of ways”. The piece builds to a radiant conclusion on the word “rest”, achieving perfect synthesis of word and sound.
Text:
Never weather-beaten sail more willing bent to shore.
Never tired pilgrim’s limbs affected slumber more,
Than my wearied sprite now longs to fly out of my troubled breast:
O come quickly, sweetest Lord, and take my soul to rest.
Ever blooming are the joys of Heaven’s high Paradise.
Cold age deafs not there our ears nor vapour dims our eyes:
Glory there the sun outshines whose beams the blessed only see:
O come quickly, glorious Lord, and raise my sprite to thee!
Songs of Farewell:
4. There Is An Old Belief Sir Hubert H. Parry (1848-1918)
This is the most profound movement of Parry’s “Songs of Farewell” (1916-18), completed in the final months of his life. Setting John Gibson Lockhart’s translation of an old Spanish poem, this eight-part work explores themes of death, rest, and transcendence with extraordinary harmonic daring and emotional depth. The music moves through passages of searching dissonance before achieving moments of sublime resolution, particularly in the final section where the voices unite in a vision of eternal peace. Parry’s sophisticated part-writing ensures each voice contributes to a complex tapestry of sound that perfectly captures the text’s meditation on mortality and hope for spiritual awakening.
Text:
There is an old belief,
That on some solemn shore,
Beyond the sphere of grief
Dear friends shall meet once more.
Beyond the sphere of Time
And Sin and Fate’s control,
Serene in changeless prime
Of body and of soul.
That creed I fain would keep
That hope I’ll ne’er forgo,
Eternal be the sleep,
If not to waken so.
Songs of Sleep and Prophecy Martin Suckling (born 1981)
Martin Suckling is a composer and violinist; he is also Deputy Head of the School of Arts and Creative Technologies and Professor of Composition at the University of York. His music has been championed by many leading orchestras and ensembles including the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Aurora Orchestra, Scottish Ensemble, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. This work is in five movements, scored for up to six voice parts.
Notes by the composer:
Lullabies and prophecies seek to be powerful spells: a magic of singing a desired world into existence. Their strategies may contrast – gentle persuasion on the one hand versus a sometimes apocalyptic certainty on the other – but they both help us navigate a period of waiting, reaching out to draw near the arrival of some new way of being.
When you are with me things will be different: this yearning underpins both the sacred and secular texts in this piece. Such a wish may be expressed with tenderness, as in the Gaelic ‘songs of sleep’ (movements two and four), whose music borrows the shapes, if not always the actual melodies, of traditional folksong; and in ‘Caidil m’ulaidh’ (‘Sleep my darling’) draws the susurration of the caressing ocean into the enveloping harmony of a slowly rotating accompaniment.
In contrast to this intimacy, the prophetic act is often associated with a disconnect, being somehow out-of-time, a voice crying out in the wilderness. There is beauty here too, and while the English ‘songs of prophecy’ each explore a different character – a stately nobility in the first movement, an explosive ferocity in the third, and an incantatory, almost hypnotic stasis in the fifth and final movement – they share the feature of having multiple strands of music coexisting at different timescales. The first movement’s unified block chords splinter into a glowing mist of independent melodies; the third movement places very rapid choral triads against an extremely slow soprano duo that winds its way earthwards. In the final movement, three timescales intersect: a background of rhythmic chanting at high speed – almost like a flutter-echo of the slower iterations of the line ‘there shall be no more’ which lies at a middle tempo. Beneath these, slowest of all, the basses and tenors intone the actual content of the prophecy in warm, resonant chords: there shall be no night.
I. There shall be Many
An opening “Invocatory” homophonic section is followed by an ethereal, other worldly repeated chant-type melody sung independently by all the upper voices. Its strangeness derives partly from the nature of the note intervals (a sort of hybrid between a whole tone scale and an ancient modal scale) and the fact that when sung at different times the notes blend into an unfamiliar chord “cluster”. On several occasions the upper melodies are joined by the lower voices in bare fifths and a tenor solo for the text “There shall be signs in the stars”
Text:
There shall be signs in the sun.
There shall be signs in the moon.
There shall be signs in the stars.
II. Cadal chan fhaigh mi (I can get no sleep)
This movement, based on a traditional Scottish folk melody begins with the melody in the lower voices accompanied by restless glissando humming in the upper parts. A middle section brings all parts together in an increasingly dissonant homophonic section. The final section (marked tender again) sees the tune passed to the upper voices whilst the lower parts sustain long notes.
Text:
Cadal chan fhaigh mi, sùgradh cha dean mise,
Nochd chan fhaigh mi’n tàmh, ‘s gun thu ghràidh
a’ tighinn.
H-uile h-oidhch’ tha mi smaoineachadh gun tig thu
Gu mo leabaidh fhin, ‘s aonaranach mise.
‘S tub u ghuirme sùil, ‘s tub u dùbailt cridhe,
‘S tub u bhinne cainnt ris na rinn mi bruidhinn.
I can get no sleep, I cannot make merry,
Tonight I can get no rest, since you are not
coming, love.
Every night I think that you will come
To my warm bed, I am desolate.
You had the bluest eyes, you had the kindest heart,
You had the most melodious voice I ever conversed with.
III. There Shall Be Many
In case any audience members did manage a snooze, this movement marked “Explosive” should awaken them! Loud fast chordal outbursts from all voices are interspersed with asymmetric silent bars, with unsettling effect! After 36 bars, 30 of them silent, two soloists join the texture with long sustained notes and end the movement with an exposed and vulnerable duet.
Text:
There Shall be forty.
There Shall be twenty.
There shall be none.
There shall be twenty.
There shall be six.
There shall be none.
There shall be a handful.
There shall be none.
There shall be none.
There shall be a very great multitude.
There shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety.
There shall be many.
There shall be five.
There shall be two.
There shall be one fold, and one shepherd.
IV. Caidil m’ulaidh (Sleep my darling)
This movement is based on a repeated pattern of three “note clusters” each of which rise and fall to produce a unique sonority. Against this pattern is woven a more traditional sounding folk song melody, sung as a contralto solo.
Text:
Caidil m’ulaidh, caidil m’uan,
Sùilean m’eudail dùin an suain;
[Luasgadh mulaid a’mhuir-làin
An sior-dhùrdanaich air tràigh.]
Thig a chulaidh, thig a luaidh,
[Thig I sitheadh uchd a’ chuain;
Bheir I thugam e gu slàn
Sgiobair mara nan seòl àrd.]
[Bheir edhachaidh leis gu fior
Usgraichean à iomadh tir,
Caidil m’ulaidh, dùin do shùil,]
Tha e thighinn, thig a ruin.
Caidil thusa, cadal sèimh
[Sùil a’ faire shuas air nèimh;
Dùin do shùilean beaga caomh]
Caidil suaimhneach ri mo thaobh.
Sleep my darling, sleep my lamb
Eyes, my treasure, close in sumber
[Mournful rolling of the high tide
The constant murmur on shore]
Come, little boat, come my dear
[The wall of the ocean wave comes rushing;]
She will bring him to me healthy
The sea skipper of the high sails.]
[He will certainly bring home
Jewels of many lands,
Sleep, my darling, close your eyes,]
He is coming, come my dear
You sleep, sleep peacefully
[A watchful eye up in Heaven
Close your tender little eyes]
Sleep contented by my side.
V. There Shall Be No More
The final movement, and the longest, is made up of two elements. In the four upper parts there is a very fast and rhythmically complex interplay repeating the words of the title, intoned “sotto voce”. Against this frantic background the lower voices intersperse long held chords which present us with the rest of the text. There is no obvious final cadence here, the upper voice pattern simply reduces to a single part and then stops, perhaps leaving us with the thought that our constant invocations to abolish pain and suffering are at constant variance with our human actions.
Text:
There shall be no more death.
There shall be no more sorrow.
There shall be no more crying.
There shall be no more pain.
There shall be no more curse.
There shall be no night.
Programme notes by Lindsay Robertshaw, 2025
A new composition in memory of David Eaves
David Eaves, a much-loved member of Leeds Guild of Singers over many years, died of cancer in 2020 aged just 45. When David’s affairs were wrapped up in 2023, he and his mother Margaret were incredibly kind to remember the choir with a legacy from his estate.
The LGS committee and Trustees reflected on how to use this gift in a special and enduring way, and resolved to commission a choral piece in his memory. We selected the York-based (but Scotland-born) composer Martin Suckling to produce a work of several movements that reflect David’s Scottish heritage and his Christian faith. We are excited to be collaborating with Martin to bring a new composition into the contemporary choral repertoire. The process has been immensely rewarding for the choir, and certainly an invigorating challenge.
David’s interests and activities stretched far beyond choral singing – from his strong Christian faith to political campaigning (Remain) and Scottish football (Rangers) or just putting the world to rights over a few drinks in the pub. His quiet wisdom and dry sense of humour were appreciated by his many friends and missed by us all.
In addition to David’s legacy, some financing has come from LGS charity reserves, and we are delighted to have received grants from three sources: the Vaughan Williams Foundation, the Hinrichsen Foundation and the Hope Scott Trust. But we would be very grateful to receive donations of any size from supporters of the Guild. If you would like to contribute to the creation of this enduring work, please visit our website.
Thank you.
leedsguildofsingers.org.uk/commission
Dates for Winter 2025 and for 2026
Sankta Lucia
Scandinavian choral magic for the season
3pm
Saturday 13 December 2025
St Michael’s Church, Headingley, LS6 3AW
Gaude!
Songs of Joy for Christmastide
3pm
Sunday 7 December 2025
St John’s Parish Church, Adel, LS16 8DQ
Saturday 7 March 2026
All Saints Church, Otley
Saturday 28 March 2026
St Chad’s Church, Far Headingley
Saturday 27 June 2026
St Edmund’s Church, Roundhay
