Anne Boyd's The Quiet Place for Oboe (doubling antique cymbals) Clarinet (doubling rin) Viola and Harp.The Quiet Place was commissioned by the Warwick andLeamington Festival for performance by Okeanos on their New Music Day on 14th July 2002.'The Quiet Place' is a meditation site in the University of York dedicated by Dame Janet Baker 'In honour of thespirituality which is in all people'. It was a place I visited frequently in the months I spent as visiting Professor at the University in late 2001. So soon after the attack on the New York Trade Centre the worldfelt a very unstable place especially to be so far from my Australian home. It was difficult to make much sense of existence in a world of fanatical fundamentalism - both Islamic and Christian. Perhaps for comfort I foundmyself thinking back a thousand years to the vital earth based spirituality of Hildegard of Bingen and uncovered an Antiphon she had composed 'Nunc Aperuit'. This chant became the basis of the work I have written forOkeanos in response to an invitation from Jinny Shaw whom I met in York last year. In English translation the words of the chant translate as 'Now the closed door has opened for us / What the serpent hassuffocated in woman./ Therefore shines forth in thedawn/ the flower from the Virgin Mary. ' The music of 'The Quiet Place' is a simple meditation which explores the moods of this text often retreating into a silencewhich is both breath and transcendence. - Anne Boyd
