The Night's Untruth

Tarik O’Regan's The Night's Untruth for SATB chorus, Brass ensemble and Organ is a co-commission celebrating the 10th anniversary of JAM (The John Armitage Memorial Trust) and the 40thanniversary of VocalEssence.

'The Night’s Untruth explores the use of sleep as metaphor by dint of excerpts from poems written in the 17th to 20th centuries. Death, love, fear, ecstasy, isolation,dreaming and rest are all textual “variations” on the “theme” of sleep and can be found in the chosen texts. The work’s title is taken from a line in a poem by Samuel Daniel (1562-1619) and speakstothe composition’s focus on sleep as a parallel, possibly dystopian, existence to the one experienced in our waking hours.' - Tarik O’Regan, March 2010

Scored for brass quintet, organ and SATB choirwith (minor) divisi and occasional moderately demanding solos for tenor and soprano, this evocative 16-minute work probes the mystery of sleep with texts, from poems by Keats, Samuel Daniel, Shakespeare, and Hart Crane: 'death,love, fear, ecstasy, isolation, dreaming and rest' are the themes O'Regan explores through these texts in a work as episodic as a disturbed night, with the title creating a 'focus in sleep as a parallel, possibly dystopian,existence'. - Organists' Review