Programme Notes

The genesis of this piece was a sketch I created in early 2018, based around the first of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "Sonnets From the Portuguese". After that particular sketch turned into a full movement in relatively quickly, the other movements developed much slower, and were put on a back burner whilst I concentrated on "Beyond the Cradle of Humanity".

In the Summer of that year, the subject of this piece came up in conversation with my friend, the mezzo soprano Liberty Spears. After discussion, I set out to complete this project to the brief of a song cycle in three parts. Elizabeth Barrett Browning (nèe Barrett) wrote these Sonnets prior to her marriage to Robert Browning, whilst under the tyrannical rule of her father. In these works, she was able to express her passions in secret. Eventually, they were published under the misleading title "Sonnets from the Portuguese", and became a classic of the romantic poetry movement.

In the last movement, in order to establish a link with the past, I have used a theme from an unpublished string quartet of mine, which can be heard most clearly in the final section.