Night Prayer / Nachtgebet (2017)
(Te lucis ante terminum)

Night Prayer was commissioned By ORA100 for Suzi Digby OBE and ORA Singers. The first public performance was given by ORA Singers, directed by Suzi Digby, Cutty Sark, Greenwich, 1 February 2017.

Text: anon., ca. 5th/6th century, English: J. M. Neale (1818–1866), German: anon., Altkirchlicher Hymnus

Night Prayer is recorded by ORA, directed by Suzi Digby, and is available on CD and as a digital download on the album Many are the Wonders on the harmonia mundi label (HMM905284).

Composer's Note
Thomas Tallis's Te lucis ante terminum has held me under its spell since I first sang it in my youth. Its plainsong melody has been a recurring obsession, appearing (usually hidden beneath the surface) in many of my works – the 3rd String Quartet and the cantata A Time to Dance, for example. So I was particularly delighted to be asked to compose a companion piece.
With music based on plainsong, an immediate challenge for the composer is how to pin down the rhythmic flexibility of the chant. Tallis's triple-time solution is supremely elegant, providing the slow-dancing heartbeat of his setting. My version, being macaronic, applies different rhythmic treatments to the Latin and vernacular (English or German) texts.
Being an inveterate lover of puns, I couldn't resist heading the score with a quotation from the Song of Solomon: 'Talis est dilectus meus'.