Three Parts Vied

This concert assembles music and poetry written on the deaths of poets, composers, and brothers and stages them in the Grand Entrance Hall of the Thames Tunnel in Rotherhithe.

Auden's In Memory of W.B. Yeats and Heaney's Audenesque commemorating Brodsky and itself inspired by Auden are cut with new translations of Catullus' poems on the death of his brother by Máirín O'Hagan.

These poems mingle with Restoration music on the same theme: Henry Purcell commemorates his choirmaster Matthew Locke and his publisher John Playford, while John Blow marks libertine poet the Earl of Rochester. The two most substantial pieces by Henry Hall and John Blow commemorate Henry Purcell himself, with double recorders and duets for soprano and bass, and two countertenors.