The Quiet Place

Anne Boyd 's The Quiet Place for Oboe (doubling antique cymbals), Clarinet (doubling rin), Viola and Harp. The Quiet Place was commissioned by the Warwick and Leamington Festival for performance by Okeanos on their New Music Day on 14th July 2002. "The Quiet Place" is a meditation site in the University of York dedicated by Dame Janet Baker "In honour of the spirituality which is in all people". It was a place I visited frequently in the months I spent as visiting Professor at the University in late 2001. So soon after the attack on the New York Trade Centre, the world felt a very unstable place, especially to be so far from my Australian home. It was difficult to make much senseof existence in a world of fanatical fundamentalism - both Islamic and Christian. Perhaps for comfort, I found myself thinking back a thousand years to the vital earth based spirituality of Hildegard of Bingen and uncovered an Antiphon she had composed, 'Nunc Aperuit'. This chant became the basis of the work I have written for Okeanos in response to an invitation from Jinny Shaw whom I met in York last year. In English translation the words of the chant translate as "Now the closed door has opened for us, / What the serpent has suffocated in woman./ Therefore shines forth in the dawn/ the flower from the Virgin Mary. " The music of "The Quiet Place" is a simple meditation which explores the moods of this text often retreating into a silence which is both breath and transcendence. - Anne Boyd