Laughter is never far away when you are in the delightful company of composer Joanna Marsh, but when the conversation turns to the craft of composition her natural ebullience gives way to an engaging seriousness. This is no mere occupation. ‘You enter a place where you are entirely on your own; it is so all-encompassing, it uses so much of you, intellectually and emotionally. What might seem a small thing, such as finding just the right way to start a piece, is a huge moment worthy of celebration, because everything flows from that point on.’

That intensely personal, intellectual approach to composition has brought her widespread acclaim, several awards and commissions from prestigious institutions and ensembles, a continuing success marked in May by the release of a new recording from the Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge, and the world premiere of a piece celebrating the 950th anniversary of the Chichester diocese.

Lament and Liberation, the recording from St John’s, includes Marsh’s hugely impressive double choir triptych Echoes in Time, the first new pieces to be commissioned by director of music Christopher Gray, who succeeded Andrew Nethsingha in 2023. The triptych spans Advent, Epiphany and Ash Wednesday and sets powerful words by priest-poet Malcolm Guite, texts that cast a thoroughly modern light on the Christian story – something that Marsh feels is vital.

‘Setting sacred text raises several questions. What is your stance? Who are you writing this for? It’s quite a pressure. I believe strongly that music must help the congregation to better understand the text. It’s for worship, but at that point you analyse your own faith. It’s tricky because everyone has their own personal take on how much of the Bible they will regard as a historical document and how much a blueprint for life. I like a text that says something that relates to now – what I read about on my news apps.’

That conviction has produced an extraordinarily dramatic set of motets that lift familiar scripture right into the 21st century, bringing an urgent message that addressing conflict, the displacement of people and climate change all have their place in a living faith.

Marsh’s Triptych has been commissioned by St John’s College, Cambridge

In the Advent piece, Hidden Light, Guite puts Mary in the Middle East of today, ‘weary and beset with fear/Yet in the darkness of her womb he stirs/Her tiny hope, the one who is to come/So on she plods, on past the hostile stares/The checkpoints and the soldiers on the street/Seeking some shelter, somewhere to retreat/And bring to birth the hidden light she bears.’ Marsh takes these words and sets up a sense of foreboding as Mary trudges through the darkness, with repeated antiphonal exchanges denoting her weary tread and a glistening major/minor tonality conjuring a sense of mystery until a resolution is found in the consoling close, ‘Show us the face of Love that casts out fear.’

Hidden Light was first sung in 2023 at St John’s Advent Carol Service, an annual fixture in the broadcast calendar and a significant platform for new work. ‘While my setting isn’t a carol as such it does have some of the musical syntax of a carol, with chord progressions and idioms that are harmonic identifiers.’ The text is a sonnet, based on the model of John Donne. Marsh had already set Donne’s famous Batter my Heart for a London commission and enjoyed returning to the form. ‘There is always a point in a sonnet where the text takes a turn, and that’s something a composer can aim for.’

Refugee, the central Epiphany piece in the triptych, shares the same thick vocal texture as Hidden Light, writhing with righteous anger as Mary is on the road once again, the Flight into Egypt becoming an analogy for the refugees we read about every day: ‘A million displaced people/On the long road of weariness and want,’ people who are ‘fleeing the wrath of someone else’s quarrel’. The music reaches a fever pitch of indignation as the monstrous Herod rages ‘and death squads spread their curse across the world’, but then comes the belief that heavenly justice will prevail. ‘Every Herod dies, and comes alone/To stand before the Lamb upon the throne.’

Dissonance runs through Still to Dust, the third in the triptych, a cry of anguish against the destruction of the rain forest and encroaching climate change, couched in terms of Ash Wednesday, when ‘Hope could rise from ashes even now/Beginning with this sign upon your brow.’ Sinuous solos feature here, first for alto and then tenor; the choral writing is agitated and dense, and yet, as in the rest of the triptych, the sonic experience is one of fascinating, unfailing beauty.

This magazine will appear just days before Marsh has another world premiere, this time a commission from Chichester Cathedral to write a piece to sit alongside Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, in a concert marking the anniversary of its first performance there 60 years ago. ‘The Bernstein piece is so iconic,’ says Marsh. ‘When I told people I had the commission they all said: “Wow! What are you going to write?” Well, it certainly isn’t a response to or a reflection on the Bernstein. The cathedral invited me to come up with a piece that would use the same forces: choir, organ, harp and percussion. I decided that because the wonderful cathedral choir will have a lot to get on with in the Bernstein, they might be grateful for something that isn’t too deeply involved, so I’ve gone for a pure SATB piece.’

Marsh used the King James version of Psalm 90 as the basis for A Psalm for Chichester. ‘It’s quite a serious, admonishing psalm, so I did a little editing, removing some of angrier passages and selecting those that are a bit less dark and punishing.’ She says dealing with the narrative of a psalm can be quite challenging ‘The text is constantly changing its mood; there are highs and lows that need managing, but understanding what the text is saying and delivering it – that’s the job of the composer.’

She had begun work on the piece last November but had to put it aside when she suddenly received a cancer diagnosis. Three months of successful treatment followed at the Royal Marsden Hospital, London – a time for reflection and re-evaluation. ‘You look at your life and you ask: who is that person? What I realised was the creative person is the real me. Once I was well enough to work again, it felt peaceful. This is solitary work, but it is like being in another place, and my experiences magnified that feeling.’ Midway through her treatment the album A Plastic Theatre, a selection of some of her choral works, was released. ‘It felt dishonest on social media to bang on about how thrilled I was with the album but not acknowledge that I was feeling grim, so I created a Facebook post just to let people know what was going on. The response was massive. About 500 people wrote to me, sharing their experiences of cancer treatment, or those of their husbands or wives. It was so heartening.’

Returning to the Chichester piece, she decided to start all over again, carefully considering the tricky balance between the organ, harp and percussion. That cheerful laughter returns when she describes working with the acoustics of the building. ‘I didn’t want a percussion part that was just a boom on the bass drum. But I also didn’t want the percussion to sound like someone had dropped a saucepan while the organ was playing…’

Lament and Liberation, recorded by the Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge, is released on 16 May

The world premiere of A Psalm for Chichester, and Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, Chichester Cathedral,
 17 May 7pm

This feature originally appeared in the Summer 2025 issue of Choir & Organ – Subscribe today