A Gift Of Heaven For Tenor Solo And Mixed Voices /

Octavo Commissioned for Stile Antico by the Stile Antico Foundation. 3 minutes for tenor solo and mixed voices. I was delighted to be asked by Stile Antico to write a new piece for their 'The Prince of Music' programme, but also rather daunted: responding to a composer of the stature of Palestrina makes one feel doomed to fail. I was therefore thrilled to discover that some of Palestrina's letters and other writings survive, and it occurred to me that it would be wonderful to set extracts to music, so that we hear words as well as notes from the master's pen during this recital. Palestrina's dedication to Philip of Austria in his Second Book of Masses especially appealed to me because of its tone, and I immediately felt a kinship with this great composer of centuries past upon reading it. It is tremendously reassuring to know that us composers are all the same, buttering up their patrons in the hope of securing more work and more money. CFH.