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Programme Note

Sleep My Child is a piece from my work for music theater Paradise Lost: Shadows and Wings. In the show it appears midway through Act II and is performed by three angels – two sopranos and a mezzo.

For years the American choir Chanticleer and I have been looking for something on which we could collaborate, and an arrangement of Sleep My Child was the project we finally settled upon. Chanticleer is an all-male group (12 men), but they insisted that I write it ‘pure SATB’. The purity of tone that the ensemble (and especially those legendary male sopranos) brought to the music matched perfectly with the delicate, ethereal sounds I had in my head. What a thrill it has been to write for them; I can only hope it will be the first of many collaborations

Eric Whitacre