In 1979 Swayne had heard a record of African music which led to a turning point in his compositions. A seminal BBC Singers commission, CRY, followed the next year; it is scored for 28 amplified voices and dedicated to Messiaen. At this time Swayne was also appointed Composer-in-Residence to the London Borough of Hounslow. Meirion Bowen has written that 'dealing with the untapped and untutored talents of school-children and writing music for many local groups led Swayne to make an urgent reapprasial of his approach to music-making'. (As a child himself, Swayne had been much encouraged by his cousin, the composer Elizabeth Maconchy.) In 1981 Swayne made a field trip to Southern Senegal and Gambia to research and record music of the Jola people. Magnificat I begins with the opening call of O Lulum, a ploughing song recorded in a village called Badem Karantabaa. When he returned from the field trip Swayne advertised for untrained musicians in Time Out magazine, forming a rhythm group called Square Root which employed both African and Western-style instruments. Magnificat I followed in 1982 while, in the composer’s words, 'I was still reeling from the impact of my belated encounter with African music and the composition of CRY'. There are parallels with the music and experiences of Steve Reich, who had travelled to Ghana in 1970. Reich’s Drumming, described as minimalism’s first masterpiece, was written after observing and studying the music of the Ewe people.

Swayne set the Magnificat in Latin, as did Pärt, though Swayne used a slightly different spelling to ensure he got the exact pronunciation he wanted. The composer has explained to me that 'the canons were carefully planned so that at key points the consonants in different lines chimed so as to keep the texture clear & uncluttered'. In its rhythmic construction Swayne’s work frequently superimposes ostinati of different lengths in a manner reminiscent of Olivier Messiaen, whose classes he had attended. The music is 'built up in polyrhythmic layers which owe a great deal to the choral songs of the Ba-Benzele pygmies of the Congo region'. The final Amens provide one example. The men sing an antiphonal figure which repeats every five beats. Above this two treble parts sing a rhythmic pattern which repeats every thirteen beats. Two other treble parts appear to copy in canon, but in fact their ostinato repeats every fifteen beats. The patterns move in and out of focus with one another. Swayne’s sketch books, now in the British Library, show that he began by writing out the Latin text and noting down the number of syllables in each phrase. 'Quia respexit humilitatem' is another example of polyrhythms. Mary’s lowliness is portrayed by the low basses in a pattern which repeats every five crotchets. The altos are on a loop which repeats every three quavers (whilst being made to sound like the car horns in Gershwin’s American in Paris!). The trebles have the most conventional music, singing the tune of 'Three blind mice' at six-beat intervals. And then the tenors turn up, exuberantly oblivious to everything else! The Church of England needs a good shake-up now and again.

Harmonically, Swayne’s Magnificat is static—most sections have only 4, 5 or 6 pitch classes. There are no modulations and the music is entirely diatonic. There are no accidentals except that every C in the piece is altered to a C sharp. One wonders why the composer didn’t add a second sharp to the key signature; I suspect the unorthodox Swayne would have hated to give anyone a chance to call the piece Swayne in D! The one solitary C natural occurs just before 'Fesit potensiam'. This unique note serves as an aural signpost heralding a new section in which Choir 2 sings canonic versions of Choir 1’s parts in augmentation. One thinks of the canonic ingenuity of fifteenth-century composers like Mouton and Ockeghem, predating even Christ Church! This passage gives a rare example of some more sustained lines, but eventually Choir 2 also breaks up into glittering fragments. Out of this we gradually become aware of a unison phrase emerging at the start of the Gloria. There are now only two pitches—B and A—right in the middle of the choral texture. All eight voice parts join in turn, in another rare use of legato. This is a wonderful choral texture; the voices are all in the same octave—the boys low and chesty coloured by fairly high men’s voices at a pitch which can deliver an overwhelming crescendo. If a manual of choral orchestration existed this would be one of my favourite entries. A similar texture was used by Britten at the start of Rejoice in the Lamb, but the effect is amplified here by Swayne’s canonic use of different words simultaneously. New parts join every seven beats, each voice being four syllables behind the previous one. We hear not only the varied colours of different voice parts singing the same pitch, but also a range of vowel sounds, adding up to a bell-like effect. It is a choral version of Klangfarbenmelodie, with each note having a subtlely different timbre. Swayne then uses the words 'Sicut erat in prinsipio' ('As it was in the beginning') to reprise the opening material. It’s strange to find the sketch books revealing that Swayne initially envisaged ending the work on a conventional E major chord! His voices traverse a wide tessitura of almost four octaves from top to bottom, in fact concluding with Mary’s words floating up to heaven—her soul, 'anima mea', at one with God. After so much almost mechanised, robotic music, with normal means of expressiveness excised, this final texture is very moving; a lone treble voice seems to be suspended for ever, as so much expectation rests on the child in Mary’s womb.

from notes by Andrew Nethsingha © 2021