Scored for soprano and counter tenor singers with sinfonietta. Text is sourced from William Blake’s ‘Songs of Innocence and of Experience’.

Premiere performance for Pulsar Festival - the Royal Danish Academy of Music with conductor Jean Thorel.

William Blake : The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun (1805)

Original text: William Blake

Excerpts from ‘The Songs of Innocence and of Experience’

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 When the stars threw down their spears

And water’d heaven with their tears,

In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

When the stars threw down their spears

And water’d heaven with their tears

Eternity shuddered, Many ages of groans

                          Fed with cold – reduced to misery.

                          To the four winds,

                          a gathered book – torn.

                          The thrones of Kings are shaken,

                          Tombs in desolate places:

                          Night is worn

                          And the morn rises

                                            from slumberous Mass.

                          The sons of eternity singing,

                          And none shall gather leaves.

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