On hearing the "Baroques"
Plainsong pain lives now
but in another Universe
Starry dervish that it is.
We listen to the silence
for that one note
of your one source.
We beg to hear the voices
of your harmony:
allow the grace-note pauses-
the still-birth breath
from that inner place,
space and exposition.
With you,
We sing of days when blade of grass
was wand for miracles.
With you,
We hold one magic chord
in one forever grain of sand.
O trick from conjured hand!
Your answer smiles before us
on our face...

Ben Murphy

From the cover of the De Anima CD... a poem by Ben Murphy

In June of this year, the Galway Baroque Singers and the RTE Concert Orchestra will perform the Irish premiere of Karl Jenkins' new work, Stabat Mater.

The powerful and moving words of the Stabat Mater, which deals with the suffering of Mary during the crucifixion of Christ, has been set to music by many composers, but Jenkins' is a new approach.

Jenkins interpolates the Latin sacred texts with settings of sympathetic poetry. The themes of weeping, desolation and prayer, as Mary sees her son on the cross, are reflected in Persian and ancient Babylon texts translated into English by poet Grahame Davies, a lament by Carol Barratt, and the hymn Ave Verum Corpus.

The composer writes: "I tend to look outside the purely western European tradition for inspiration and freshness, so apart from setting the religious text I have also included words by ancient writers from what is now the Middle-East."

Specially commissioned to celebrate Liverpool's designation as 2008 European City of Culture, the work receives its world premiere in March.

The choir is delighted and honoured to be given the privilege of performing this work for the very first time in Ireland.