Allan Clayton & Dunedin Consort premiere ‘Black Shuck Lament’
My Black Shuck Lament will be premiered by tenor Allan Clayton and a string quintet from the Dunedin Consort, at the Aldeburgh Festival on 21 June:
Black Shuck Lament uses two texts, cut up, re-ordered, and intermingled: firstly, a poem by me made from fragments of the Book of Lamentations – anguished in tone but largely without the religious context. Secondly, extracts from contemporary accounts of ‘black shuck’, a demonic black dog that seems to have roamed East Anglia from around the 12th century, terrorising locals at best and killing them at worst.
Allan, an Artist-in-Residence at the festival, will be singing another set of Lamentations in the concert – Jan Zelenka’s set from 1772. The Dunedins will also perform Caroline Shaw’s Punctum, Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5, and his Orchestral Suite in B minor.
The concert will be at the beautiful Holy Trinity Church in Blythburgh, where last year my O Ecclesia, O Euchari (after Hildegard), and Hymns of Kassiana (after Kassia) were premiered by Daniel Pioro and the Marian Consort.