Today, the first “single” (?) from the upcoming album I made with The Tallis Scholars is out: Rough Notes.

You can stream it in all of the obvious places ✨ here,✨ and a little snippet is below:

The whole album will be available 13 March.

Some context:

Rough Notes is a setting of the last diary entry of Captain Robert Falcon Scott, who froze to death in Antarctica in March of 1912, offset by an enty from 1911, describing the “brilliant display” of the aurora australis. His death, and that of his traveling companions, came after a week-long snowstorm, and when it became clear that the end was near, his entries become reflective and somewhat grand: “I do not regret this journey which has shown that Englishmen can endure hardships, help one another, and meet death with as great a fortitude as ever in the past.” The music, accordingly, alternates between hymn-like declarations of text, mostly in unison, and more abstract tone-painting.

This piece is all to do with cold textures: austere pieces of counterpoint, unstable harmonies, and a sense of the inevitable. The piece ends with a recapitulation of the Southern Lights music, almost a fever dream, before decaying into a single voice singing: “These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale.”

Texts

Tonight we had a glorious auroral display — quite the most brilliant I have seen. At one time the sky from North North-West to South South-East as high as the zenith was massed with arches, bands, and curtains, always in rapid movement.

The waving curtains were especially fascinating — a wave of bright light would start at one end and run along to the other, or a patch of brighter light would spread as if to reinforce the failing light of the curtain.

(Diary entry Sunday 21 May 1911)

For four days we have been unable to leave the tent — the gale howling about us. We are weak, writing is difficult, but for my own sake, I do not regret this journey which has shown that Englishmen can endure hardships, help one another, and meet death with as great a fortitude as ever in the past.

We took risks, we knew we took them; things have come out against us, and therefore we have no cause for complaint, but bow to the will of Providence, determined still to do our best to the last.

These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale.

(‘Message to the Public’ March 1912)

— Captain Robert Scott

give it a listen!