The award-winning international composer who wrote the soundtrack to the film The Piano will premiere new music in Kelso next month.
The composition by British minimalist composer Michael Nyman CBE, which will be performed at Kelso Old Parish Church on September 14, has been inspired by the Hawick Missal Fragment.
The piece will form part of the ‘Fragments of Black – a song of night’ concert and art installation, the second in a trilogy of events celebrating the medieval manuscript discovered in Hawick in 2009.
Musical director for the Fragments Project, Dr Matthew Cheung Salisbury, said: ‘We look forward to hearing Michael Nyman’s response to the medieval music of the fragment, a contemporary response by a world-renowned composer to melodies that were heard and known across the Western world, but largely lost since the Reformation.’
Organisers say the event will be “an evening of light, sound and song”.
The Hawick Missal Fragment, discovered in the archives of Hawick Heritage Hub, is two joined pages of a 12th-century ‘missal’: a book containing texts and chants for Mass during Holy Week.
Nyman has won a Golden Globe, a British Academy Award and an Ivor Novello award and is the composer of the acclaimed opera The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat.
For more information visit www.fragmentsproject.co.uk