Still life painting was historically viewed almost akin to cataloguing and was therefore considered to be a ‘low’ form of classical art, yet many artists working with the form imbued paintings with suggestions of a meaning beyond just the recording of objects, for example by including vanitas symbols in the paintings. Still Lives presents words that observe and magnify mundane scenes and objects and pairs them with phrasings and harmonies that are reminiscent of church music. The text is stretched out and abstracted —perhaps if you don’t pay close attention it could almost sound like it's in Latin. By putting these things together, I’d like to ask if a table or a street can be imbued with a meaning, or a kind of spirituality, as an altar or a church is?

Commissioned and recorded by The Marian Consort though the ensemble’s Emerging Voices programme.

[recording to be published online sometime in Autumn] // score