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Programme Note

But Have Been Found Again is a setting for unaccompanied chorus of eight stanzas from 'Canciones entre el alma y el Esposo' songs between the soul and the bridegroom by the sixteenth century Spanish mystic St John of the Cross. In his poetry St John seems to go beyond merely recording mystical experience. Rather he seems to be living it through the writing of it, so intense is the imagery of his poetry. His work is frequently ecstatic, but at the same time serene, and I have attempted to capture this apparently paradoxical state in my setting of his verses.

The music is for the most part very quiet, only rising to a climax with the central soprano solo, thence returning to the mood of the opening and finally dying away to nothing.

Geoffery Burgon