The mediaeval mystic, Margery Kempe (ca.1373-1448) is a fascinating figure. She freed herself from the restraint of marriage and embarked on pilgrimages to sacred sites in Europe and the Middle East, dressed usually in white. Kempe considered her travels as a series of divine trials and whilst nowadays she can be seen a suffering the symptoms of various mental illnesses, she distilled them into The Booke, a spiritual autobiography that she began in 1430, despite being illiterate.
The manuscript was copied, probably shortly before 1450, by someone who signed himself Salthows; this scribe has been shown to be the Norwich monk Richard Salthouse. However after the 16th century Kempe’s book was essentially lost; the only surviving manuscript was found again in 1934 the private library of the Butler-Bowdon family, and this is now in the British Library.
The Light of Paradise is a new work by Paul Mealor which was commissioned by the Zurich Chamber Singers. An hour long work for choir and saxophone quartet, Mealor describes it as a choral opera. Its fourteen movements, devotions Mealor calls them, are loosely based on the fourteen stations of the Way of the Cross, using words by Kempe to create a narrative arc, presenting the story of her pilgrimage as well as unfolding her religious universe.
The result is neither opera nor oratorio, and mixes choral writing with solos and music for the saxophone quartet. Mealor creates a distinctive sound world all of his own. Whilst Mealor’s musical style is a long way from that of Arvo Pärt, listening to The Light of Paradise you cannot help but think about the way Pärt reinvented the Lutheran passion in his own image.
British composers have rather shied away from the more ecstatic, mystical side to Catholicism. You have to remember that Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius was regarded as rather too Catholic for the Three Choirs Festival (even as late as the 1930s, the Dean of Peterborough banned the work from the cathedral). So it is intriguing, and heartening, to find Mealor treating religious mysticism so directly and in work that makes it approachable.
Paul Mealor’s The Light of Paradise was premiered by the Zurich Chamber Singers and Sonic Art Saxophone Quartet, conductor Christian Erny in January 2024 [see details], and is released on the Berlin Classics label – https://BC.lnk.to/lightofparadiseID
