In the pre-internet 1980s, listeners to BBC Radio 4’s Daily Service would often phone in, eager to know about a new piece of choral music they had just heard. They would ask if it was published or available on record, only to be told it had been written by the programme’s young director of music, James Whitbourn, sometimes only hours before.
When he took up the job straight from university, he discovered that few suitable two-minute pieces existed for the BBC Singers, so he set about writing his own. That positive reaction from the audience encouraged him to think there might be a future for his style of tonal composition, where he sought to say new things using established musical language.
