'… Jonathan Harvey is perhaps the least flippant of English composers writing today, for most of his music… His new work for chorus and orchestra is certainly devotional, but not in the sense of Victorian hymnology. Its text, drawn from the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and a twelfth-century 'saint', Allama Probhu, is both sung and spoken in a score of ingenious subtlety. From an echo of Holst's whole-tone 'wisdom' (Hymn of Jesus), it progresses through unison speech above long held pedals to speedy declamation resolving into clouds of quiet harmony… Most memorable is the onomatopoeic penultimate speaking chorus which impinges on the air like a rippling stream, flowing over an ostinato second on the lower strings, and merging finally on a gentle ocean of pentatonic bliss.'
The Sunday Times (Felix Aprahamian), 24 February 1985
'A lovely new work… Harvey banks everything on his ability to make a precise and instant musical effect which is then, in a sense, held by the spoken texts before proceeding to the next rung on the mystical ladder, with the most intensely beautiful moments reserved for the end… He is helped by an acute harmonic and rhythmic sense, evolved over years of searching for colourings and movements that have emotional richness without sentimentality… His dove-tailing effects create a new kind of space within the choral sound; a valuable idea which other composers for choir might usefully study.'
The Observer (Stephen Walsh), 24 February 1985
'Evolving as it does in an ever-changing series of soundscapes The Path of Devotion offers a series of thoroughly individual, thoroughly Western, re-interpretations of the kind of enveloping infinitely varied guides to transcendental meditation which are contained in Indian literature and in Indian music.'
The Daily Telegraph (Geoffrey Norris), February 1985
The Sunday Times (Felix Aprahamian), 24 February 1985
'A lovely new work… Harvey banks everything on his ability to make a precise and instant musical effect which is then, in a sense, held by the spoken texts before proceeding to the next rung on the mystical ladder, with the most intensely beautiful moments reserved for the end… He is helped by an acute harmonic and rhythmic sense, evolved over years of searching for colourings and movements that have emotional richness without sentimentality… His dove-tailing effects create a new kind of space within the choral sound; a valuable idea which other composers for choir might usefully study.'
The Observer (Stephen Walsh), 24 February 1985
'Evolving as it does in an ever-changing series of soundscapes The Path of Devotion offers a series of thoroughly individual, thoroughly Western, re-interpretations of the kind of enveloping infinitely varied guides to transcendental meditation which are contained in Indian literature and in Indian music.'
The Daily Telegraph (Geoffrey Norris), February 1985