Flight (20 Nov)

PROGRAM

Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine  Eric Whitacre

Deserts of Exile  Paul Stanhope

Contrapunctus 1 (adapted for ACS from The Art of Fugue)  J. S. Bach

Agnus Dei (from Mass in G Minor)  Ralph Vaughan Williams

My Spirit Sang All Day  Gerald Finzi

…and music by Henry Purcell, Ralph Vaughan Williams & Vytautas Miškinis

History tells us that Leonardo da Vinci invented a flying machine. Legend has it that he may have actually flown it! A flight of fancy? It’s immaterial in this program – this music is for flights of our imagination. And flights can be metaphorical too: Bach knew better than most that a fugue is a flight; Paul Stanhope’s music sings of a flight into exile; John Taverner shows us that musical lines can fly too! Like Finzi’s singing spirits, they rise and soar and float better than any flying contraption yet conceived by science. Even aeronautical engineers know that, when it comes to ‘uplift’, music was there first!