This single-movement work for choir is a setting of the text 'Morning' by Rowan Sawday. It deals with the period between the end of a night's sleep (when dreams are at their most intense) and the moment of waking. The notion of focus is explored in a three-fold manner: firstly using the contrast between blurred textures and more lucid ones, drawing parallels between the dream-state and reality; secondly through the use of space, bringing the listener's attention to constantly-changing parts of the performance space; and thirdly through text, in gradually following the narrator's train of thought from abstract, dream-like imagery through to the more concrete realisations of the morning, his whereabouts, the time, the race for the train...

'On Waking (Morning)' was commissioned by MusArc through the Sound & Music 'Portfolio' Scheme, and is dedicated to my Grandpa, Douglas Ian Westwood.

'Morning' – Rowan Sawday (2013)

I grab for its tail as it vanished

A flash and the whale grows small

Beeping

Legs in the substance of dreaming

It is damp on my pillow

Cold is the air of the world

Hot is my cave I am flicker

Glimpse of a warm-headed marvel

Slug in the depth of a river

I am

Made of a mountain of shoes

Asleep for a parcel of time

My father but not my father

A red-footed runner on water

I run through a house full of rooms

My bed is a bunk at the top

My city's a dust-covered ruins

I stop at the window to watch

the wall coming

My bed in its frame

My arm is a pipe full of rocks

Sixteen minutes to get to the train

December

Clapton

11 o' clock