A comforting evening in York

In late 2019, I was commissioned by the Chapter House Choir, York, to compose a new 5-8 minute a cappella choral piece for them. The commission was provided by Adrian Fuller, a tenor and the choir’s treasurer, and his sister Katharine in honour of their parents, Graham and Olwyn. (You can read Adrian’s explanation here.)

It was a very special project, and a joy to work with Ben Morris and Adrian and to work on the piece itself.

The main brief they had given me was to link the new work to Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem, ideally using some of the same texts and responding to some of the same ideas of loss and comfort for the living. Ben suggested using the King James English translations, which was a great suggestion as he was right that the phrases sound lovely in that edition.

At our first in-person meeting in York at the end of October 2019, Ben gave me a page with the relevant text extracts printed on it, and I contemplated it on the train journey home. And very quickly, a selection started to form that together felt like they could tell the right story for the new work.

A gentle, warm, hug-like piece emerged, and by the time it was done, the simple but evocative title Comfort seemed the most fitting.

A photograph I took of York Minster’s East Window when visiting in October 2019, as the dappled sunlight was so beautiful.

By early January 2020, the piece was written and sent to the choir to start rehearsing. I made another visit in early March 2020 to hear a rehearsal before the concert on the 21st March; things were changing fast at that time, and I privately quietly questioned my choice to travel then, if I was going to be back in just over two weeks for the concert.

In the end, I was very glad I went – as unsurprisingly for us all now, that concert didn’t go ahead.

More happily, the choir were able to reconvene in autumn 2021 for rehearsals, and decided to put on their planned Brahms concert with the premiere of this new work. I was thrilled to hear it would get its premiere performance at last, and that the Fuller family would be able to hear it.

So it was that on 13th November 2021 that I returned to York to hear their rehearsal, for tea and cake with Adrian, and for the beautiful concert by the Chapter House Choir. The setting in the Nave of York Minster, rather than the Quire as originally planned in 2020, was stunning, with the striking backdrop of the re-instated organ glistening gold and the darkened Quire behind.

The performance of Comfort was perfect – I was so impressed by the detail they brought out and the cohesion of all the voices. And then the Brahms was glorious, very moving and beautifully accompanied with Brahms’ own piano four-hands arrangement.

Thank you again to everyone at Chapter House Choir, York, and to the Fullers. It was a real treat to be at the concert and to hear you perform in such a wonderful setting as York Minster.

With Katharine (left) and Adrian (centre) after the concert