A Time of Rapture

Michael Berkeley [b.1948]

A Time of Rapture WORLD PREMIERE

Belinda and Julius Drake were generously responsible for the creation on this new song. The text, suggested by them, comes from Wordsworth’s The Prelude in which the poet recalls his own personal embrace of nature. At first I struggled to see a way to set these dynamic lines but Schubert gave me the answer in his irresistible conjuring up of journeys on powerful steeds. The song is bookended with a contrastingly introverted phrase from my cycle, Speaking Silence, suggesting first the abstract nature of rapture and, finally, the dying sun of evening.

Michael Berkeley