A set of four songs for composer John Woolrich, for soprano and piano. Sung for their world premiere by Claire Booth with pianist Andrew West in Folkestone, 2025.

These songs are very different from my other librettos, in that I produced the original texts through a process similar to automatic writing, while listening to previous instrumental works by the composer. This allowed images and ideas to appear, not quite from nowhere.

The dream logic of fairy tale rose in response to heard musical shapes and emblems, and was speckled with memory and preoccupation. Freed from deliberate conscious meaning, the words could both direct, and then be parsed by, the new music to which they were set.

This way of writing is less sympathetic to the eventual singer! Claire Booth has an extraordinary talent for enunciation and making unexpected words heard when sung, so it was wonderful to hear her turn these strange almost-tales into uncanny, delightful songs.

“Make us a house, dying Elm, they whisper.
O, we are quiet.
O, we are small.
Let us not touch, but come in, dying Elm.
Open your deadwood door.“

– extract from Once There Was Not

“The piano part of this miniature song cycle isn’t an ‘accompaniment’: the singer and the pianist are equals, often sharing the same musical line. The music is predominantly spiky, sharp-edged and brittle: ‘Listen. Thin song there.'” – John Woolrich