Music for Galway & Galway 2020 present

Resounding Landscape

In association with Irish Baroque Orchestra

Resurgam

Irish Baroque Orchestra

Peter Whelan, director

Rhona Clarke, O Vis Aeternitatis

Henry Purcell, Hail! Bright Cecilia

Serendipitously, our final Abendmusik of the season falls on the feast day of St Cecilia, patron saint of musicians. Purcell’s ode in honour of the Roman martyr sets a text by Irishman Nicholas Brady in which a wide array of musical instruments are extolled both as human characters and voices of nature itself. Heaven and earth are brought together, and the “jarring seeds of matter” into agreement, in Purcell’s grand choruses and intimate arias and duets. These themes are the inspiration for the programme’s “curtain-raiser”: Rhona Clarke’s new setting of Hildegard’s extraordinary O vis eternitatis, a celebration of the divinity of the created order.