This piece is an attempt to place Elvis Presley in the world of Lutheran cantatas of the early 18th century.

The chorale cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach and his contemporaries weaved music around Lutheran hymns that would have been incredibly well known to the congregation. This familiar hymns would be harmonised in chorales, extemporised and decorated in vocal arias, and generally smuggled in to the music in any way the composer could manage.

This piece treats the American Civil War ballad melody Aura Lee as if it were a Lutheran hymn. The same melody was used (with new lyrics) for Elvis Presley’s Love Me Tender.

The three chorale movements see the tune straightforwardly harmonised in the style of the period – the middle one a bit more unsettling and in a minor key. The second movement is a lounge jazz version of the song for recorder and organ that gets taken over by string chords (jazz is another form of music where familiar existing melodies get extemporised and re-harmonised). The fourth movement uses a hollowed out skeleton of one of Bach’s cantata movements, with lines from Love Me Tender drifting in, in the manner of a chorale fantasia.

Instrumentation:

baroque ensemble: fl, 2 ob, bsn, chamber org, hpsd, strings (min. 1.1.1.1.1)

Duration:

13 mins

Commission:

Commissioned by Wigmore Hall

Performances:

28 November 2026
La Nuova Musica
Wigmore Hall, London, UK

World premiere