Lightning Lullaby

This musical performance takes place at Holy Trinity and All Saints Church in Winterton, Norfolk. The performance will draw on the rich folk culture of the area, and question how folktales originate as paradoxical stories. Thematically it will centre on the tale of the choral composer Peter Warlock’s trip to the church in the early 20th Century where, upon playing a folk song on the church’s organ, the church was hit by lightning (or so one telling of the tale goes!).

Practically, the performance will be played on an electric guitar and will consist of a linking together of three pieces: ‘Lullaby’, by Peter Warlock, and the Norfolk folk songs ‘Windy Old Weather’ and ‘Down by the Riverside’. The latter of which was collected and arranged by Warlock colleague E.J. Moeran and was the piece originally performed by Warlock on the church organ. An ambient improvisation of discrete pitches and chords will act as prelude, interlude and epilogue to these three pieces, weaving them together into a dream-like narrative that projects Warlock as both a real-life historical individual and semi-ficitonalised folktale in his own right, and recognises the Holy Trinity and All Saints church’s unique relevance in this narrative. It also recognises how the church exists as a threshold, both in the context of this modern folktale as physical bridge between fact and the fantastic, but also the broader cultural threshold that the church occupies between the material and spiritual.