All God's Creatures

First Performance: Cantilena Choir and Co-op Concentio Youth Choir, Helen Burrows (piano and violin),soloists tba, Quay Church, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 7.30, 8 March 2008.

Settings of classic texts on the subject of animals. A work suggested by Kathy Atkins, manager of the Guildford Philharmonic Orchestra.

Composer’s note:

The work begins with an excerpt from William Blake’s ‘Auguries of Innocence’ spoken by children over the sound of the orchestra, leading dramatically into the first song. ‘The Tiger’ and then to a gentle setting of ‘The Lamb’. Tennyson’s ‘The Owl’ is treated sardonically (‘warming his five wits’) and ‘The Snail’ of John Bunan very smoothly, featuring a solo violin. ‘Rats’ are squeaky, noisy and rumbustious, but ‘The Swan’ follows with grace and peace, led by the harp. The seventh song takes a passage from the Book of Job – ‘Leviathan’. Is it a whale or a sea-monster or a dragon?. The music conjures up a picture of a giant whale, using organ, full brass and even a thunder sheet! The eighth song summons up Lewis Carroll’s smiling crocodile of the Nile, using conga drums and marimba; then follows ‘The Swallow’ by Christina Rossetti, a swooping evocation of flight and sun, and ‘The Oxen’ by Thomas Hardy. The work ends as it began with children speaking over orchestral sounds, now very quiet, the words again by Christina Rossetti:’Hurt no living thing’.

Note by HB on option to project film (2019):

In the summer of 2010 I decided to shoot some film inspired by the songs and started with tigers at the wonderful Kolmården Wildlife Park, a huge zoo overlooking Bråviken bay in Sweden. I then made a trip to Lofoten Island off the coast of Norway to shoot the whale sequence with my son Christopher. Back in London I met film-maker John Mills who offerred to continue filming in Surrey and Sussex, and made beautiful sequences for The Lamb,The Owl,The Snail,The Swan and his final contribution ‘Swallows’ shot in Northern France. I had meant to continue the film but became pre-occupied with a film of another song-cycle,’The Land of Counterpane’ which was made by animator Mark Reeve and film-maker Emmet Elvin. In summer 2019 I asked Emmet to help me complete ‘All God’s Creatures. He created the stained-glass images for The Oxen and together we shot ‘Hurt no living thing’, The Crocodile and the animal roundabout, used for the title sequences, at London Zoo.