Rare books, manuscripts, music, ephemera…
22nd June 2022
Although I had dabbled a bit before—I remember showing some things I had written to Lionel Dakers on an RSCM singing course once (I must have been about eleven), and I wrote a couple of psalm chants in my late teens—my composing only really got going in 2006, when I was in my early thirties […]
Read more
7th January 2022
Happy New Year. Things have been quiet on the blog for a while, so I thought I’d post a little update. December was quite busy, catching up with cataloguing and working on some new compositions. A new list of recent acquisitions should be out later in the month, and I am also pleased to report […]
Read more
5th November 2021
This is another post (one of a series) about pieces of music I have written. This week it’s the turn of The Little One, which I wrote back in 2009 for the Senior Choir of Dr Challoner’s High School, just up the road in Little Chalfont. It came about after the Choir of St John’s […]
Read more
14th October 2021
Attentive readers will have noticed that there was no blogpost last week. I was in York, teaching at YABS, the York Antiquarian Book Seminar: three-and-a-half days talking about books and bookselling to some wonderfully engaged students keen to know more. It’s always an enjoyable few days, and this year particularly so as going away to […]
Read more
1st October 2021
I’ve blogged before about translating, and then setting, the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. As yesterday was International Translation Day, I thought this week I’d write about another piece of mine, At Cana. This was actually what first brought me to Rilke, when, in 2019, I was looking for a text to set for a […]
Read more
1st July 2021
Last year, I blogged about my Three Heine Love Songs. I wrote them back in 2009, so it was very nice to hear them again recently, in a virtual performance by the University of St Andrews Chamber Choir on their Facebook page. Amazingly, the same week as the St Andrews video went online, I received […]
Read more