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Drop Drop
PROGRAMME
Hildegard von Bingen Deus enim rorem in illas misit
Trad. arr. Bengt Ollén Trilo
Trad. Kyivan Chant By the Waters of Babylon
Paul Mealor Drop, Drop, Slow Tears
Anders Edenroth Water
William Walton A Litany ‘Drop, Drop, Slow Tears’
Trad. arr. Lee Kesselman Afton Water
Gregorian Chant Vidi Aquam
Shruthi Rajasekar Slow Tears
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina Sicut Cervus
Orlando Gibbons Drop, Drop, Slow Tears
Eric Whitacre Water Night
Jamie W. Hall Drop, Drop, Slow Tears
Katerina Gimon Water
Trad. Improvised Bring Me Little Water, Sylvie
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Conductor Ellie Slorach
Programme Notes
Join Kantos on a journey through water’s sacred, cleansing, and mystifying qualities.
Carried through Kantos's concerts is the guiding wisdom of Hildegard von Bingen. The chant Deus enim rorem in illas misit sets the scene for Drop Drop in typically evocative fashion: For God rained dew upon them / to grow their widespread fame / that all the peoples should sup / of its honour / as of food. It's sung by two soprano voices of Kantos, hidden around the space and accompanied by a gentle water soundscape.
In Rose of Nevada, Mark Jenkin's trippy 2025 time travel film set in a Cornish fishing village, two shipmates—played by Callum Turner and George MacKay—are recruited to fish on a mysterious boat long thought lost that arrives unexpectedly in the harbour one day. The film is really about relationships that ache with longing; it could easily be soundtracked by the folk song Trilo, arranged by Swedish choral conductor Bengt Ollén, with its plaintive, distant sound, rushing wave textures and foghorn chords. Lorna Day sings a solo from the perspective of a fishwife, waiting for her husband to return from sea.
Psalm 137 (By the Waters of Babylon), heard here in the Kievan chant form, is a text that tells of the Israelites' deep sorrow as they reflect on their exile from Jerusalem. It's a deep text that travels from nostalgia towards something more existential: "How shall I sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?," they ask. There's a moment for reflection here on displacement, one of the most defining issues of our time, that future water shortages will only elevate.
At the centre of this programme is the text Drop, drop, slow tears by Phineas Fletcher, a prolific and varied 17th century writer who spent most of his life in the east of England. The text focuses on the redemptive power of tears: "In your deep floods drown all my faults and fears," Fletcher writes. In his setting, Paul Mealor's ocean-wide textures embodies Fletcher's thoughts of whole-body submersion. Listen for the full range of choral registers, from deep basses to soprano Elspeth Piggott's skyward solo line.
Where Drop, Drop finds a textual centre in Fletcher, its emotional heart comes in Anders Edenroth's Water. In a foreword, the composer describes his "poetic, political and philosophical perspective on this transparent matter... some of us take it for granted, others perish from the lack of it." Edenroth's lively, upbeat piece builds a textural effect from singers blowing over the tops of water bottles; from there, he speaks.
In 1912, William Walton won a scholarship to become a chorister at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford. This was transformational for a young Walton: born in Oldham into a family of modest means, he would later claim that he began composing as a way of avoiding a return to the North West. His setting of Drop, drop was written when he was a teenager, and is remarkably mature, anticipating the unusual movement through tonalities that would later form an essential part of his style. It's eerier and more reserved than Mealor's setting; it's also more dramatic, as it swirls unpredictably through textures and harmonies.
The Afton Water is a small river in Ayrshire, Scotland. Its setting by Robert Burns is a swooning lyric poem, of the sweetness of nature, where Burns surrounds a sleeping lover "Mary" (thought to be Margaret Campbell, the "Highland Mary" of the famous poem) with images of green valleys and crystal streams. The upper voices of Kantos sing Lee Kesselman's charming arrangement of a Scottish folk song which sets Burns's lyrics.
Shared between many composers and poets in this programme is a belief in water as something precious, sacred, and clarifying. The Gregorian plainchant Vidi Aquam, sung at the beginning of Mass as the congregation is sprinkled with baptismal water, refers to the words of the prophet Ezekiel, who saw water "flowing from the Temple... and all to whom this water came were saved." This time, Kantos’ lower voices to sing the chant.
Slow tears, a Kantos commission, is "a wordless evocation" of Fletcher's central text by American composer Shruthi Rajasekar. "Using different vocalisations," the composer writes, "the piece imagines the flow of water to be individual journeys merging to form a communal transformation." It's an aleatoric piece, meaning a lot of freedom is built into the piece, and Rajasekar focuses on the different qualities of vocal delivery that the choir can make.
Water's essential quality in life means it's longed for, fought for, and dreamed about. Christian texts transpose this longing for water onto animals, and relating this to a soul's thirst for the Almighty. Palestrina's famous motet Sicut cervus, sung with a slightly smaller choir, opens with this image: "As the deer longs for the flowing streams, so longs my soul for thee, O God." The texture gets even smaller still for Orlando Gibbons' setting of Drop, drop, a beautifully intimate homophonic setting sung at a remove by distant Kantos voices.
Eric Whitacre describes getting home from a life-altering conversation with his mentor, Bruce Mayhall, and wanting to write him a piece. He turned to the poetry of Octavio Paz, the Mexican poet famed for his existential explorations and for capturing nighttime in words. Whitacre turned to Paz's poem Agua Nocturna. "The music sounded in the air as I read the poem, as if it were a part of the poetry," he says. It was a perfect fit for Whitacre, someone who frequently turns to slumber, nocturnal themes. Water Night has many of Whitacre's trademark close, harsh harmonies, but it takes on a darker hue than usual: it’s a texture, sung here in the round, in which you can lose yourself.
The final Drop drop setting comes from Jamie W. Hall. It acts as a synthesis of many of the musical themes heard in the programme. Listen closely, and you can find the drones of Trilo, the simple homophony of Gibbons' setting, a few Whitacre-like climaxes, the sweetness of Afton Water, and some of Walton's strangeness.
Until now, the awesome power of water is rarely mentioned. The torrential opening of Water, the fourth movement of Katerina Gimon's piece Elements, serves as an important reminder. The initial throbbing motions eventually lose energy, replaced by two florid solos from Sarah Keirle-Dos Santos; and Emily Brown Gibson. But in Gimon's dynamic, cinematic world, nothing sticks around for long: that texture quickly returns, with cries, sighs and wails around it.
A sweetness is threaded through Kantos's journey in water, and it forms the closing note. Dating from 1936, but recorded countless times since, the traditional American song Bring me little water, Sylvie returns to an intimate space. We can worship water, long for it, live in fear of it running out, and upturn our lives in search of it. Sylvie reminds us that we can give it, too.
THE cHOIR
SOPRANO
Emily Brown Gibson
Eleonore Cockerham
Sarah Keirle-Dos Santos
Elspeth Piggott
Dominique Saulnier
ALTO
Jessica Conway
Lorna Day
Toluwani Idowu
Lucy Vallis
TENOR
Brennan Alleyne
Alistair Donaghue
Robin Morton
Timothy Peters
BASS
James Connolly
Sam Gilliatt
Harry Mobbs
Blake Scanlen
THE TEAM
Company Director Claire Shercliff
Creative Director Ellie Slorach
Production Manager Adam Critchlow
Communications & Audience Officer Ailsa Burns
Development Consultant Laurenne Chapman
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