Programme Notes

In late 2023, I was commissioned by my good friend Rebecca Leggett to write her a new song. This was the second commission I have received from her in my professional life; the first was a completely solo song entitled "On the Sussex Downs" to be performed during the COVID lockdown.

This commission was for a song with words by a poet with a Sussex connection. After some searching, we came across the work of Charlotte Turner Smith (1749 - 1806), who lived in the Bignor Park estate outside of Pulborough. The poem that we selected was one of Smith's elegaic sonnets, no.69. It was written while she was staying in Exmouth, Devon, and happened to witness a rather astonishing event - a sailor who had been imprisoned in Rochefort, France, was returning home, and a crowd had gathered to meet him.

I hoped to capture both the sense of being an onlooker to this extraordinary event, and the innermost feelings of the freed man.