Kairos II by James Batty published on 2021-05-17T13:26:36Z Performed by CHROMA Ensemble and musicians from the Royal Academy of Music Lucy Driver - Flute Stuart King - Clarinets Max Ruisi - Cello Kat Tinker - Piano Esther Beyer - Harp Jonathan Phillips - Vibraphone St Mark's Church, Marylebone, London 7th April 2021 Kairos II was inspired by the Book of Hours, a devotional Christian book that was used by people for private prayer from the Middle Ages through to the Renaissance. I was fascinated by this idea of individual spiritual practice becoming more and more important through history, and how today we think of personal rituals as being perhaps the most important part of spirituality, both within and outside of religion: most meditation and mindfulness is an individual activity, for example. Beginning with a reference to Christianity's Byzantine heritage, the piece explores the experience of focusing attention on the present moment in a prayerful state. “Kairos” in Ancient Greek refers to an opportune or ideal moment. In writing the piece, I was also considering the writings of St. Augustine of Hippo on time as a measure of observed change. The piece uses some slowly evolving processes, such as prolation canons: a musical technique from the Middle Ages where voices imitate one another at different tempos. The plainchant hymn to St. Augustine appears in the first of these. Another historical influence on the piece were neumes, an expressive handwritten form of medieval musical notation that represents melodic gestures, which I incorporated as a stimulus for improvisation. Genre Classical Comment by Michele Deiana Beautiful sound! 2021-07-14T09:46:12Z