Back in the late 1990s one of the origins for ideas for new musical works was the moment during mass when I tuned the homily out and my mind went into a sort of free association.
I sang in the Latin Mass choir at St Mary’s Cadogan Street; both the choice of readings and the Gregorian chant that we sang fed into my musical ideas. Jacob wrestling with the angel (from Genesis) was one such moment.
A striking yet somewhat unsatisfactory image, the story has a tantalising, gnomic quality as if something was being missed out. There is, of course, a famous Gauguin painting inspired by the story, Vision after the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel) now in the Scottish National Gallery, along with other interpretations by Rembrandt, and others.
And he rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his two women servants, and his eleven sons, and passed over the ford Jabbok. And he took them, and sent them over the brook, and sent over all that he had. And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him. And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me. And he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob. And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed. And Jacob asked him, and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? And he blessed him there. – Genesis 32
But my thoughts of ‘what if’ led to the idea of filling in the gaps in the story, making the wrestling a metaphor for something far more sexual. The result was Jacob and the Angel – a nocturne for choir and orchestra, which was premiered in June 1999 by my own choir, FifteenB, conducted by Paul Ayres with the Camerata Santa Dorotea.
The work is in five movements, the first and the last – Nocturne and Envoi – use my own text based on the Genesis story. The second movement, Ludus has a wrestling scene very much inspired by the one in D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love, and following this are two movements setting lines from the Song of Songs – Aubade and Love Song. In both these latter, my selection of text deliberately focused on the more homo-erotic lines from the Song of Songs, and there are some remarkably spicy ones!
Following the premiere the piece rather lay fallow, a work I intended to come back to but never did. Then early this year, we were discussing the programme for London Concord Singers’ 60th anniversary celebrations. My music has been a feature of the choir’s programmes for a number of years, with the 50th anniversary and 40th anniversary programmes both including a premiere of one of my pieces. The choir’s conductor, Gerard Lim, asked if I had any settings of the Song of Songs.
This was one of those moments when the gap between thought and deed was quite small. The two movements from Jacob and the Angel happen to be my only settings of the Song of Songs and the string accompaniment transferred to organ with relative ease. The resulting work, Aubade and Love Song is something more than a simple transcription. Decisions needed to be made about voicing and more, and then I decided to use material from the rest of the cantata to link the two original movements together.
The new/old work, Aubade and Love Song will be premiered at St Giles Cripplegate on Friday 10 July 2026 by London Concord Singers, conductor Gerard Lim, organist Hilary Punnett as part of a programme that includes Arvo Pärt’s Berliner Messe, Jonathan Dove’s Seek Him That Maketh The Seven Stars, and music by Pierre Villette, Britten, Finzi, and Dowland.
Full details from TicketSource.
