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St. Olave's church commissions new work to celebrate 350 years of historic Diary
18 February 2010
St Olave's Church is commissioning composer Benjamin Till to help celebrate 350 years of Pepys' Diary with a major new choral work. Benjamin is planning to write a 40-part motet - a choral work with 40 individual parts, based entirely on passages from the great Diary.
July 2009 performance at St. Mary-le-Bow church and Samuel Pepys with his famous Diary
His starting point is Tallis' Spem In Alium but the Pepys work will feature singers from a huge range of vocal backgrounds including choral, opera, musical theatre, early music, folk and gospel. Each of the 8 choirs of 5 singers will represent a different aspect of Pepys' character. He will be recruiting singers soon and would love to hear from anyone who's interested.
Benjamin started a blog on January 1st - do have a read. The blog is about the development of the project, and what Pepys was up to 350 years ago to the day. The performance is likely to take place in November 2010 with auditions around August, but it's not too early to get in touch now.
pepysmotet.blogspot.com
The Pepys work will be performed alongside Benjamin's own Oranges and Lemons, which was premièred last year. This work features every bell in every church mentioned in the longer version of the famous nursery rhyme (200 separate bells, 17 churches). He had to climb into dangerous belfries in order to record them - and nearly died twice! The bells are accompanied by a choir of people who live or work within earshot of one of the churches. You can hear this Oranges and Lemons here: www.benjamintill.com/orangesandlemons. This might give you a bit of a taste of what's to come with the Pepys Motet! He will also be recruiting for the Oranges and Lemons choir, so if that interests you please also get in touch.
Benjamin
ben@benjamintill.com
