Located in the UK
Located in the USA
Located in Europe
- Nico Muhly
We Sundry Things Invent (2025)
- St. Rose Music Publishing (World)
Commissioned by The Frick Collection.
Commissioner exclusivity applies
- Ct + str
- Countertenor
- 8 min
- Thomas Traherne
- 26th April 2025, Stephen A. Schwarzman Auditorium, New York, United States of America
Programme Note
We Sundry Things Invent is a simple setting of Consummation by Thomas Traherne. It is in response to Bellini’s St. Francis in Ecstasy, and seems, to me, to be a text about sight and nature. We see St Francis looking into the distance, neither straight up nor straight down; Traherne imagines the fishes in the sea having sight of the same skies we do; he imagines animals, kingdoms, and a sense of the infinite: thoughts being free “to move within a Sphere of endless Reach.” The music begins and ends in a haze, and moves through moments of intense brightness.
– NICO MUHLY