The Hazelnut (2020)

Details
​Description: Choir

Duration: 4'

Instrumentation: SATB

​Commission: Commissioned by Choir & Organ Magazine, for their March / April 2021 issue.

First performance: 

Score link: Score available from Choir & Organ Magazine, March 2021-August 2021. Thereafter, it is available from the composer.

Recording:

Programme Note
In 1373, an anchoress from Norwich named Julian received a series of divine revelations on her deathbed. She dictated her interpretation of these revelations in two stunning texts, both titled Revelations of Divine Love. They are beautiful, idiosyncratic accounts of her inexpressible experience. They are the earliest surviving English text written by a woman. In this passage, the whole of creation is revealed to her in a ball the size of a hazelnut. It is dedicated to my nephew, Zack Haisell.

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Text
He showed me a little thing,
the quantity of a hazelnut,
lying in the palm of my hand;
as round as a ball.

I thought: What may this be?
I was answered: It is all that is made.
I marvelled: How it might last?
I thought it might suddenly have fallen to naught for littleness.

I was answered: It lasteth, and ever shall last for that God loves it.
This little thing that is made, I thought it might have fallen to naught for littleness.

​Julian of Norwich, from Revelations of Divine Love (The Long Text), adapted by Joe Bates