In Tune - with Joby Talbot - 26.04.06

In Tune – BBC Radio 3 – Wednesday 10th May

Sean Rafferty was joined in the studio by composer Joby Talbot to talk about Tenebrae’s new CD release ’ Path of Miracles, its performance tomorrow in Norwich Cathedral, and their summer tour in notrthern Spain.

Sean Rafferty:
Now for a ‘divine’ piece which is to be performed in Norwich Cathedral tomorrow night by a group that kind of had their inaugural performance here in this studio, and that is TENEBRAE, Nigel Short’s group, who have a real theatrical quality about them as well as being incredibly musical.
Joby Talbot:
Oh, they’re the most amazing choral sound I’ve ever heard actually.

SR: So, did you have them in mind when you wrote the music?
JT: Yes, it was their commission. Nigel [Short] and Gabriel Crouch, both ex-King’s Singers, hatched this plot to commission a piece that was all about the Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella in northern Spain. The idea was that each movement would be able to stand alone and be performed in each of thos locations and then that all four movements would be performed for the first time in Santiago itself. It didn’t quite pan out that way and the City of London Festival left to our rescue and we did the premiere in St. Batholomews Church, London last July, which was absolutely electrifying. The following week the choir all got together and recorded the piece fresh from that wonderful premiere and the CD came out yesterday.

SR: It’s been born just in time to entice the people of Norwich tomorrow night to hear it. Will you do it in Spain along these ancient medieval staging posts on the pilgrims’ route?
JT: Yes, but they’re not doing all the places after which the movements are named. They’re doing two of them, Burgos and Leon, in July of this year. So, that sounds like a very good excuse to hang out in northern Spain and drink lots of Rioja to boot!

SR: Of course it’s an ancient Christian tradition, but before that it was a path to the end of the world wasn’t it – an ancient ancient pagan route before it became a place of Christian Pilgrimage.
JT: Oh, it’s incredible – the history along that route is palpable, and when you get to the west front of Santiago Cathedral itself there’s a statue of St. James at the base of the central pillar where, over the last 900 years, every piglrim has leant down and kissed the head of the statue. Where the hands of the millions of pilgrims have rested in the solid granite there’s a hand-shaped indentation about an inch deep – and you suddenly feel the weight of history.

SR: We’ll hear the very opening now. What’s the first place?
JT: Roncesvalles

SR: You’re using several languages. What’s the idea here?
JT: Roncesvalles is a small town with on old medieval monastery. Many of the pilgrim routes meet when descending the Pyrennees into Spain, and there’s this ancient hospice where people would rest after the gruelling passage over the mountains. Now it’s where many start the pilgrimage, so it’s a place where you hear many languages, see many people from all parts of the world converging, and there’s a real sense of excitement – I was trying to catch it.

Excerpt: Opening of ‘Path of Miracles’ by Joby Talbot, mvt 1 ‘Roncesvalles’

SR: It’s got a very eastern, mystical quality. I gather that when you first did this, the men were in a circle in the church and the girls appeared from above.
JT: I was thinking how to begin this piece. It’s a big hour-long unaccompanied piece and I wanted to come up with something different, rather than them just lining up at the front in their dickie-bows ready to go. The candles were there the lights came down and the men just kind of drifted on humming, and gradually formed this closed circle then, as you say, when the girls came in they were all hidden in the galleries and you didn’t know they were there – least of all the verger – they emerged and it was quite electrifying.

SR: So, is there a different feeling for each of these staging-posts heading towards Santiago de Compostella that inspired the work?
JT: Yes, exactly. Basically I was trying to structure it like a symphony and find a different mood for each movement. The second one is about Burgos and is sort of my ‘Dies Irae’- I understand that if you do the Pilgrimage by the time you get to Burgos your feet are well and truly hurting and it’s a beatuiful town, very cluttered and Baroque, lots of relics, and then when you get to Leon it’s the absolute opposite. It’s a big beautiful Romanesque interior with lots of stained glass, hundreds of storks nesting on the spires – and not so many saints’ parts – and in fact that’s my kind of ‘Lux Aeterna’. When Tenebrae do the tour in July, they’re actually able to perform the piece in that Cathedral so that’ll be quite amazing.

SR: So what fire-power did you reserve for the finale?
JT: Because the work is about the places linking the journey, so the finale is about the whole journey to Santiago. The words that Jonathan Dickinson, the wonderful poet, wrote quite explicitly geographically about the verdant Sierra down into this beautiful galician landscape and yes, I wanted a quite festive feel for this movement in Santiago. You stand in the square and see the pilgims arrive – it’s always raining, they call Santiago the urinal of Spain (more rainfall than in Ireland apparently) – with a sense of pure unalloyed joy upon arriving. These french teenagers arrived and they were so happy they made a big pyramid of their luggage and proceeded to dance wildly around it singing, and you couldn’t help but simle!

SR: So, we’ll go back to Leon now. There are lots of words here ‘We sleep on the earth and dream of the road, we wake to the road and we walk’. Is this the feelings of the pilgrims and their movement?
JT: It’s the mediative thing, you know when you get into step and your feet just carry you along and your mind is elsewhere contemplating the wonders of the universe.

Excerpt: ‘Path of Miracles’ by Joby Talbot, mvt 3 ‘Leon’