A Prayer to St John the Baptist

for SATB and organWritten for the 2018 BBC Advent broadcast sung by the choir of St John's College, Cambridge, A Prayer to St John the Baptist sets an artfully crafted text that combines Guido d'Arezzo's Ut queant laxis (itself a Hymn to John the Baptist, as well as a medieval music-teaching mnemonic) with Thomas Merton's poem on the same subject. The organ's flowing quavers represent Merton's baptismal 'rivers of water', while the largely octatonic melodies conjure a tellingly mysterious atmosphere.