Christopher Churcher
Kingfishers (2024)
for SATB voices (divisi) and organ
approx. duration: 3 minutes
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.
I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
Programme Note
Kingfishers sets words by the English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, written in 1877, the year he was ordained as a Jesuit priest. The poem revels in the vivid beauty of the natural world: the brilliance of kingfishers, the flicker of dragonflies as they seem to catch fire in flight, and the way each living thing lives out the fullness of its unmistakable self. Hopkins then draws out a theological vision beneath this splendour, suggesting that all human selves are ultimately animated by Christ, whose presence is revealed in their limbs and eyes. Each person, in their way, an embodiment of Jesus.
My setting follows this unfolding. It begins with a sparkling organ line, while the choir moves with quick, syncopated energy, the voices tumbling forward in a vivid rush. As Hopkins turns toward Christ and the profound centrality of divine presence to human nature, the music gradually expands into a broader, more expansive climax.
