Psalm-setting challenge

Frances-Hoad reverts to the organ for her setting of Ps. 1, beginning in lyric commendation for the man of Good Life, reversing halfway to condemn the Bad in a long unaccompanied passage seething with mounting turbulence till, at the prophecy that they shall all perish, the organ re-enters on a corruscating dissonance; after which the mighty brute is instructed to de-clutch (even as the voices rise ‘to a virtual scream’), and expires as ignominiously as the Jabberwocky. And Siem’s piece is still more radically deconstructive/destructive: her take on her text, some verses from Ps. 140, is as memorable in its severity as any of the richer textures preferred by her elders: pared to the bare bone, female voices in three parts splinter the excoriating denunciation of man’s vile ways, the jagged phrases sharply pointed with intermittent stabs from a solo trumpet, till the acrid brilliant little thing locks into traumatised stasis.

These utterly disparate six composers have all produced a response to hallowed religious words that is as intensely felt as it is musically inspired. Whatever the state of our individual belief or disbelief, we unanimously believe in Music!