The Solar Heresies & The Lunar Sequence

The text of ‘The Solar Heresies’ was written, in the space of an hour, in February 2015, at Udaipur, Rajasthan, on the shore of Lake Pichola, as women did their laundry on the little dhobi ghat below our window.

This was, for me, a very spontaneous and unplanned bit of writing, and once it was done, I thought of it as a poem, or a metaphysical tract; very important to me, but with no musical application whatsoever.

However, by 2018 I had completed writing ‘The Lunar Sequence’, the seventeen minute piece which now forms the ‘junior partner’, or ‘B’ side, of this album, and I realised that ‘The Solar Heresies’ could also be set to music in a similar way. Subsequently, I wrote music for the text making almost no revisions or alterations to the original wording.

It is a mystical work, but, as with almost all my writing, the overall mood is light-hearted (the Tragic Muse has never been able to gain much traction with me). However, I should make it clear that there are some very serious metaphysical propositions being offered here.

The rather over-excited utterances about ‘God’ in the last section of the piece are perhaps better understood as referring to ‘Operative Providence’, a phrase from the poet Charles Williams which describes the ‘supernatural-in-operation’ as it affects us here on Earth. This is the spiritual entity that answers our prayers and influences our lives. I hold conventionally agnostic views about the existence or otherwise of an overarching, universal Creator God, but I certainly believe in a Planetary God and its transcendent, Godlike Influence on human existence.

As to the origins of this pre-eminent spiritual phenomenon, that is the ‘Speculation’ in the title. I feel sure that, at some point in the history of metaphysical theorising, similar ideas will have been promulgated before, but I have been unable to find reference to them. So I do not claim originality, but simply plead ignorance of my elders and betters.

This piece could not have come into existence in its present form without the generous and brilliant contribution of Ricardo Odriozola of the Griegakademiet, the music conservatory of the University of Bergen, Norway. A supporter and champion of my work, and that of many other contemporary composers, he created sophisticated and beautiful orchestral arrangements of the thirty-two short musical fragments that make up the piece, and organised, supervised and produced the recording sessions at which eminent performers from the conservatory faculty and from the Bergen
Philharmonic Orchestra played my music. I cannot overstate my gratitude to this great musician, and to the international team of soloists that he assembled and conducted.

The Lunar Sequence’ comprises a series of meditations on the full moon. I found that, over the years, I had written various fragments of text about different aspects of this lovely and mysterious object, and these make up much of the libretto. Some lines of the spoken lyrics date from my teenage years, and the fact that these sections are not immediately obvious suggests the discomforting possibility that my writing has not matured quite as much as I would like to imagine.

The work was recorded in ‘Studio Judex’, perhaps better described as my garden shed.

My profound thanks are due to all the musicians involved: