Cloud Capp'd Towers - Work for SATB choir

‘The Cloud-Capp’d Towers’, follows the piece, ‘Full Fathom Five’, by utilising another of Shakespeare’s poignant passages from The Tempest. Spoken by Prospero during a play-within-a-play, the text reflects on the fleeting nature of human endeavours and the inevitable impermanence of all things. The “cloud-capp’d towers,” “gorgeous palaces,” and “solemn temples” represent the grandeur of human achievement, but Shakespeare reminds us that they, along with life itself, will dissolve like an insubstantial pageant, leaving “not a rack behind.” This piece aims to captures the duality of grandeur and melancholy through ethereal close harmonies and sonorous textures.