“Snow on snow, snow on snow”

"Every year these words of Christina Rossetti’s run through my mind over and over. And so began my first piece of choral music, weaving together both Harold Darke's and Gustav Holst’s settings of In the Bleak Midwinter. Eight parts, or two quartets, repeat two bars of music in two keys at the same time. I premiered the piece with The Part Singers on my birthday in March 2019 accompanied by a recording of a silver fridge made from the inside. This winter I have stitched us together; each voice recorded separately from a different living room.

Earlier in the summer I was mixing a remote performance of Charles Villiers Stanford’s Blue Bird and received a time-stretched version of the piece in my inbox from Duncan. The word “blue” - captured from the heart of Stanford’s setting and suspended like fog, gradually moving and yet absorbing everything into itself. I felt like I had caught the reflected image of the bird in Mary Elizabeth Coleridge’s poem and it dawned on me to release our pieces together."

- Eleanor Cully

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The Part Singers: Louise Alp, Roshan Battiwalla, James Beattie, Ruth Bostock, Eleanor Cully, Frances Durning, John Harman, Chris Kneale and Ruairidh Pattie

Snow on snow: composed, edited and mixed by Eleanor Cully

Mastered by Jorge Boehringer

In Blue: composed, edited, mixed and mastered by Duncan Chapman

Cover image: Natalie Boon

2. In Blue - Duncan Chapman [28:57]