Howard Skempton | Rise up my love | Ars Nova Copenhagen

Howard Skempton is one of a group of British composers who in the 1980s were identified as “experimental,” in the sense that they wrote tonal music that was often intimate in scale, avoided the rhetoric of modernism, and were inspired by Satie, Cage, and Reich while not necessarily imitating them to the extent of being labeled as minimalists. Rise up my love is a fine example of this.
Recorded live at Garnisonskirken in Copenhagen in may, 2017.
The words are from the Song of Solomon.
i) Rise up my love, my fair one, and come away. For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear upon the earth. The time of singing of birds is come, And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; The fig-tree putteth forth her green figs, And the vines with the tender grapes give a good smell. O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, In the secret places of the stairs, Let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; For sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely. Rise up my love, my fair one.
ii) How fair is thy love, my sister, my spouse! How much better is thy love than wine! And the smell of thine ointments than all spices!
iii) My beloved is gone down into his garden, to the beds of spices, to feed in the gardens, and to gather lilies.
iv) How fair and how pleasant art thou, O love, for delights! I am my beloved’s and his desire is toward me.

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This old video?

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Yes, it is from 2017 - some old recordings that we never got around to editing.