The Cats are crowding us (2023)
SSAA unaccompanied, 3 mins.
A setting of a traditional incantation from the Scottish Highlands for unaccompanied upper voices.
Programme Note: When I first came across these lines of text, 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 I then found 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.
First performance 26 March 2025 at the John Armitage Memorial Trust 25th anniversary concert at St. Brides, Fleet Street, London, by the Selwyn College Chapel Choir, conductor Sarah MacDonald.