Alcyone, Asterope, Calaeno, Electra, Maia, Merope, Taygete: the names of "seven sisters", the seven most clearly-visible stars of the Pleiades, or the Plough: a constellation people have used for thousands of years as timekeepers, signposts and omens. In the Book of Job, God says to the put-upon saint "Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades?" - for Job, gazing at these stars gave him an awareness of his place in the scheme of things. Today our world is saturated with artificial light: how often do we appreciate the ancient glow of the stars?

We also live in a noisy world - traffic, computer hums, muzak - how often do we hear the simple beauty of the oldest of instruments - the human voice? In the 1990s Tonus Peregrinus has involved new and changing audiences in music of the past and of the future. We have nurtured a special atmosphere, one with an intensity of silence that encourages the audience to be much more than consumers, to participate in the music by the very act of listening. We want to take our music into spaces where the human voice is normally treated as some insignificant buzz - non-sacred places of work, travel, commerce; we hope to attract the ears and hearts of an audience unused to such sounds. In the heat of our bustling modern existence we want to give our listeners the experience of a clear night sky.

Procession of the Seven Stars is that opportunity to work in many kinds of space and to develop an aspect of our performance technique which has always been central, yet open to further creativity: the movement and positioning of the singers. In the art world the frame that defines the limits of what constitutes a work of art and separates it from what is not art has been thrown out. We want to take our music out of its frame by exploring all the spaces of a performance venue and by challenging the relationship of the performers to the audience. Our inspiration is once again from the stars: for millennia their majestic movement in the heavens has been mirrored in the processions and choreography of human ritual and worship.

Two sopranos, one alto, one countertenor, two tenors, and a bass - what does that mean? To say soprano is like saying 'star' - there are thousands of sopranos in London; most ensembles sing music which has been sung by many others before and after them. But in Tonus Peregrinus there is a direct relationship - a "sweet influence" - between each singer and the music which we sing - music that has been written over the last nine years by the composer/director of the ensemble for the ensemble. Working together in this way has bound our voices and our emotions together as tightly as the Pleiades. And the uniqueness of this repertoire has been the focus of two programmes on Dutch national radio.

Our proposal for Procession of the Seven Stars is a specially-compiled sequence of pieces that echo on more than one level the properties of structural perfection of the number seven.

1.
Dusk to Dawn
an upbeat celebration of the seven days of creation laced with an ironic text about what man has done to this planet;


2.
O Wisdom of God
a sevenfold antiphon addressed to him that reaches "from the beginning to the end", followed by the first refrain of another antiphon:

O Holy of Holies


3.
The Lord's Prayer
a setting of the seven petitions of "Our Father", followed by the second, shorter refrain:

O Holy of Holies


4.
Adoro Te
the heart of the procession - the intimate moment of communion, with the final echo of

O Holy of Holies


5.
Amen
just one word - thrown between two widely-separated groups of singers


6.
In the middle of the Seven Lamps
a vision from the Book of Revelation, setting the scene for

Seven Letters
the longest section and the climax of the procession, in which each of the seven singers takes a solo part as if reading the letter addressed to them (the seven letters in the Book of Revelation are addressed to the leaders - the "angels" - of seven churches in what is now Turkey; they are symbolised in the preceding vision as seven stars in the right hand of Jesus);


7.
O Love
a song in seven verses, intertwining images of human and divine love, with a melody that goes ever upward - "o'er yonder skies".

The Pleiades were also known as "sailing stars" because early Greek seamen would set sail only when they were visible. For us the seven stars are sending us and our audience on a journey of a different, but just as adventurous kind. We hope you will agree that Procession of the Seven Stars is a journey worth making.

copyright Antony Pitts 1999