Haydn

Two years ago I rashly accepted a commission from Tring Chamber Music and Paul Barritt, leader of the Hallé orchestra, to write poems to read between movements of Haydn's quartet Opus 51, which meditates on Christ's "Seven Last Words". Haydn, commissioned in 1785 by Cádiz cathedral, wrote this music to go between words so it's hard to perform and listen to without some.