This short song for upper voice choir (SSAA) unaccompanied received its first performance a few weeks ago, in the twenty-fifth anniversary concert of the John Armitage Memorial Trust (JAM) at St Bride’s Church in London’s Fleet Street. It was performed – brilliantly – by the upper voices of the Selwyn College Chapel Choir, director Sarah MacDonald. This choir and its director have performed and recorded quite a lot of my music over the years – but this performance was a bit of a surprise, to me, but also to them I think, as the music for the call for scores was submitted anonymously.
I wrote the piece in 2023, and when I first came across the lines of text that I used, taken from Alexander Carmichael’s nineteenth-century collection of hymns and incantations entitled ‘Carmina Gadelica’ (Songs of the Gaels), what sprung into my mind immediately was hordes of gigantic cats rampaging over the Scottish highlands and islands, destroying everything they encountered!
That may not have been far from the truth – but then I read that the ‘Cats’ were a tribe of human warriors – possibly the Cat tribe whose name is preserved in the English name Caithness and the Gaelic name ‘Cataich’ or ‘men of Sutherland’. And like many tribal battles of the past and present, it’s clear that the people who suffered most were the women and children, left behind to guard their homesteads and their livelihood.
Here is the text:
The Cats are crowding us,
But we are firm, we are strong, we survive.
They break upon us,
The lift the spoil from us,
They steal the *kine from us,
They strip bare our houses, our homesteads;
But we are firm, we are strong, we endure, we survive.
The Cats are crowding us,
But we are firm, we are strong, we survive.
For murder and for mauling they are come,
For howling and for hazard they are come,
Murder, mauling, hazard, howling,
For pillage and for plunder,
And for our mothers, and for our children
And all we hold dear, and close.
The evil Cats are crowding us,
In the evil hour, the Cats are come;
The Cats are crowding on us,
But we are firm, we are strong, we survive, we endure,
We are firm, we are strong!
*kine = cattle
Whether ‘cats’ or ‘warriors’, the opening lines suggested a rhythmic approach in which the ‘cats’ are thrown from voice to voice – and, almost throughout, the music maintains the rhythmic and forceful drive established at the opening as the text outlines the struggle against adversity for those whom the warriors have left behind. There is just one change of mood – without slackening the pace, the lines ‘and for our mothers, and for our children’ is given a more expressive and expansive treatment – but this is soon taken over by the return of the rhythmic chanting which characterises the rest of the piece.
The song is quite short, and I would like to incorporate it into a set of three movements for upper voices on related texts – this movement would probably be the finale – so I’m hoping to get some ideas soon. But in the meanwhile, you can hear and see the first performance, live at the concert, here. Thank you to JAM, and to Sarah Macdonald and the Selwyn College Chapel Choir, for a most memorable and exciting concert!
Please contact me if you’d like to see a score, and the illustration is of Scottish crofters in the nineteenth century.