Nico Muhly's My Days for ATTB choir and five Viola Da Gambas. Parts for five Viols.This 16 minute piece of sheet music was commissioned by Wigmore Hall and the world première was performed by Fretwork and Hilliard Ensemble at Wigmore Hall October 2 2012.'My Days is a ritualised memory piece about Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625) written for two ensembles whose recordings informed so much of my musical development. I feel like I spend half of my life trying to trick string players to play like Fretwork and vocalists to singlike the Hilliard Ensemble so it was with enormous pleasure that I composed this piece. The text isderived from Psalm 39 which Gibbons himself set as well as an account of Gibbons's own autopsy which is a poignant 17th century semi-anonymous text. One of the most thrilling things about the sound of five violas da gamba playing together is the sense of their phrasing being derived from vocal music but made somehow electric and ecstatic through ornamentation and the friction of the strings. The piece has an idée fixe based on a minor scale with two possible resolutions and many ornaments. In between iterations the voices in rhythmic unison intone the psalm. It isn't until the autopsy text arrives that the voices begin to split into more elaborate ?Gibbonsy? verses and responses. A series of semiimprovisedfragments on the text 'Take thy plague away from me' introduces the third section of the piece where plucked strings create a halo around the text 'hear my prayer OLord.' The piece ends with the ornaments wildly exploded over the voices singing two words endlessly repeated.' - Nico Muhly

Three arrangements including Ave Verum Corpus and the Lacrimosa from the Requiem.During the year 1771 when Mozart was 15 years old he and his father Leopold were touring Italy which was at that time the most formidable citadel of the music world. In the following four years the young Mozart was received at the homes and villas of Italy's aristocracy. He met the most famous musicians of the time including Niccolo Piccinni operatic rival to Gluck and Padre Martini from whom he was to benefit from studies in counterpoint. He also met many noted male soprano singers and for one the celebrated Venanzio Rauzzini he wrote in 1773 the motet Exsultate Jubilate from whichcomes the well known Alleluia.At the end of his life only 19 years later in Vienna 1791 Mozart was very ill and working on a number of massive works such as the operas The Magic Flute and Titus also the Requiem. Titus was completed in 18 nerve-shattering days as it had to be performed in Prague in September 1791. At its premiere it was a complete flop. This affected the now overworked almost penniless composer's spirit and he returned to Vienna suffering from mental and physical exhaustion. Rest was denied him. The Magic Flute had to be finished for its premier on September 30th 1791. The task of the Requiem still faced him. In this weakened state Mozart thought that he was in fact writing his own requiem reading evil omens into the commissioning of the work. He thought someone had calculated the precise time of his death and was thus troubled with sombre thoughts. He completed the first two of the twelve parts. The next six parts were in an unfinished state and his manuscript ceased at the Lacrimosa. Süssmayer who was working closely with Mozart at the time was given the task of finishing the Requiem.Ave Verum Corpus is also one of his final works. It is a setting of an anonymous hymn written as a motet for Anton Stoll the choirmaster at Baden in June 1791.Mozart was a composer of great genius who