Duration: 7’ 30”

Text: Setting of John F Deane’s poem of the same title

Themes: Secular, nature, plants, gardens, birds, romantic love, beauty, rebirth, eternity

Musical content: The piece is based on a three bar quotation from Kenneth Leighton’s God’s Grandeur. The bars occur very near the end of his work as it draws towards its final cadence. In The World Is Charged, these three bars repeat like waves following each other. The work calms to a stillness in the central portion but then picks up and moves off again to an incandescent ending. There is a sense of chamber music in the piece as each part moves very independently, maintaining its individual importance.

Suitable for: professional or able amateur choirs

The World Is Charged was co-commissioned by Norfolk & Norwich Festival and I Fagiolini Charitable Trust for I Fagiolini’s programme, ‘ReWilding The Waste Land’. The first performance was given by I Fagiolini for Voces8’s LiveFromLondon Festival in 2021.