It’s one of the world’s most famous pieces of music – but like you’ve never heard before

“I thought of Barber’s Adagio which he obviously wrote for strings but then added words decades later and turned it into his famous Agnus Dei,” she says. “There are loads of other examples. It’s a little bit like taking a novel and turning it into a play or film. You’re not saying the book was rubbish, so it needs to be a film. What you’re actually saying is that the book was so good it made me want to turn it into a film. That’s what I felt about the Vivaldi – the piece is so good I want choirs to be able to sing it.”

Forbes L’Estrange ended up using an eclectic collection of words, including hymn texts, Bible passages and poetry by Emily Brontë.

“I wanted it to sound as if the words came first and then the music,” she says. “I didn’t want it to sound like I was shoehorning the words in. I’m pleased with what I’ve ended up with, and I hope if Vivaldi heard it, he might think, ‘Yes, that works’.”

Forbes L’Estrange employed an innovative process to fund A Season To Sing, approaching more than 50 choirs worldwide to join in a joint commissioning venture.

I hope if Vivaldi heard it he might think, ‘Yes, that works’

Joanna Forbes L’Estrange

“Very few choirs have the wherewithal to commission a 40-minute piece,” she says. “So I thought, how about each choir contributes just a little part of it so they sort of own it for that year, the anniversary year? It was all a bit mad, really. I was writing to choirs I had some vague connection with saying, ‘Hi, you don’t know me, but do you want to give me some money …’”

One of those ensembles that signed up was Sydney’s Symphony Chorus. Artistic and music director Brett Weymark has included sections of A Season To Sing in the chorus’ season-opening concert series.

Entitled I Was Glad, after Hubert Parry’s setting of Psalm 122, which opens the program, the series brings together many familiar works, inspired by the tradition of choral music from English cathedrals.

Other great composers highlighted include Gerald Finzi, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Edward Elgar as well as Howard Goodall, whose setting of Psalm 23 (The Lord Is My Shepherd) is well known to modern audiences as the theme tune for the BBC comedy The Vicar of Dibley.

“It is great to indulge ourselves in making a beautiful legato line with some great text and some really great pieces of music,” says Weymark.

“I think every composer on this program is aware of the acoustical qualities of the buildings in which they will probably be heard. There are obvious moments in every single piece, and it’s the use of silence in a lot of them.

“Some of the most difficult chords are often held for a long period of time, and there’s a moment of silence afterwards. So that chord just lingers for a moment in the cathedral before it’s generally resolved. These grand spaces are possibly now one of the few spaces on the planet where you can sit and reflect in relative silence and somehow try and block the outside world out.”

I Was Glad, April 1, 7pm, Sydney Opera House; April 5, All Saints Cathedral Bathurst; April 12, St Peter & Paul’s Old Cathedral, Goulburn