Touch Light

	Michael Berkeley: Touch Light
		Scoring: soprano, counter-tenor, and strings
		Duration: 8 minutes
		Michael Berkeley writes: "The idea of writing a duet for soprano and counter-tenor immediately put me in mind of Monteverdi and Handel but when I looked more closely at the scores, the text (and music) they employed for rapturous moments can usually be boiled down to very simple language - a caro mio or mio tesoro. In other words it was going to be hard to find a text or poem that was sufficiently spare and that would offer opportunities for two voices. So I decided to distil the essence of some of these ecstatic moments into my own words and also employed a variation on the ground bass which lies at the heart of some of my favourite arias and duets - Dido's Lament by Purcell or the final great duet from Poppea by Monteverdi. Touch Light is, then, a homage to these masters of early opera, and although originally envisaged with a counter-tenor and soprano it is not exclusive to these voices." Touch Light was commissioned for the 2005 Tetbury Music Festival to celebrate the marriage of Katie Smith and Jonnie Wake, and first performed by Lorna Anderson and Robin Blaze with the King's Consort, directed by Robert King.