I have lived with Mahler’s music for virtually all of my musical life, so this commission was one I had the greatest pleasure in accepting. But to be paired with such a monumental symphony [as Mahler's Second] is more than a little intimidating, and I decided early on that, in spite of the temptation to use Mahler’s huge orchestral forces, I would write a work for unaccompanied chorus. I have for a long time wanted to work again with the Hallé choir.  And rather than try to emulate Mahler in any way I wanted to contrast his setting of the the Resurrection Ode with an essentially humanist message.

 

Crossing the Alps is written for chorus in eight parts, and although the harmonic language is not complex in itself, it moves in unexpected directions which I felt needed the underpinning of an organ pedal (as well as optional part for the manual).  It was composed between July and October of 2009, and lasts approximately 7 minutes.

 

The text is from the ‘Crossing the Alps’ sequence from Book VI of Wordsworth’s The Prelude, and I’ve taken the liberty of conflating the 1805 and 1850 texts.  It deals with the liberation of the imagination, the decisive moment (although no the climax of the piece) being the words ‘Our destiny, our nature, and our home, Is with infinitude, and only there’. The text was suggested to me by Paul Driver, to whom the work is dedicated.