Psalm Tone (1973) & The Nun's Erotic Epiphany (1972)

I have a quiet passion for the modality of devotional psalmody which represents the oldest traditional of music making in Western Culture. I say quiet passion because it is intuitively responsive rather than compulsively obsessional, as many latter chanters are. I listen in a reverie of joy and, somehow, this becomes reflected and realised in my musical psalmody, which operates in the same minimal parameters as that of ancient psalm tones, at least analogous parameters, the analogy being very personal.

Alongside this, of course, are the images of the medieval psalters, such as the famous Luttrell Psalter, which I make a point of visiting whenever I'm in London. What does one make of such grotesque juxtapositionings? Where the sacred texts are framed by all manner of hideous 'babewynn' or else earthly scene of seasonal labour? No doubt there will be a plentitude of theory on this, but to me it seems obvious enough; a dichotomy born of a very fundamental duality between our aspirant spirituality and the material realms within which we dwell, and dream, and take delight, and make the most of; here in this all too brief temporal realm in which we hurry towards our deathly conclusion.

Rarely, however, do I have a particular psalm in mind; I might read Common Prayer for oblique poetic inspiration (the Grail Translations are ghastly) but I prefer these things in Latin so the literal weight of the words doesn't interfere with the lightness of their deeper poetical meaning.

Hermione Harvestman - Note for 'Psalm Tones & Liturgies Volume 1'

According to Miranda, she had a number of strange visionary experiences during her Roman Catholic upbringing which were exacerbated by the deaths of her parents when she was 12, which resulted in her becoming more devout with a view to becoming a nun herself. She rejected the notion wholesale when she fell met and in love with the young son of a member of a band of travelling Druids in the West Country and ran away from her convent school to join him when she was fifteen, much to outrage of her teachers, but seemingly to the general indifference of her disinterested guardians who couldn't see what the fuss was about. She reported to me that it was the experience of losing her virginity on Glastonbury Tor after taking several magic mushrooms (Psilocybe semilanceata) in the autumn of 1967 that effectively severed her allegiance to Catholicism for the next three years. There's little doubt, therefore, that the sequence of The Nun's Erotic Mushroom Epiphany is entirely autobiographical.

Miranda fetched up at Durham in 1970 to do her degree, and, being a country girl at heart, she moved out into the dales in her second year, happy to commute to university in her 2CV. It was around this time she re-discovered the comforts of her faith whilst writing the script for her play The Durham Pilgrims, which she first showed to me in 1971. I was so impressed by her literary imagination (if not several of the details) that I agreed to help her with its eventual production and provide the musical score. I must add that whilst I didn't agree with several aspects of the play (not least those aspects I thought might shock the intended audience) I gave Miranda 100% support in its realisation. Throughout our friendship Miranda's relationship with the faith of her childhood remained ambiguous. She confided in me that whilst she was an atheist, the child in her (the 12-year-old presumably) was still a visionary novice intent on taking Holy Orders.' - Hermione Harvestman, note for 'The Durham Pilgrims).

Stage direction by Miranda Hardy:

Scene Three : THE NUN sits down to rest in a meadow. Here she notices several strangely pointed mushrooms growing in the grass. Hungry, she begins to pick and eat them. After a while she experiences a great euphoria and visionary state of bliss in which the world comes alive in such colours and patterns as she has never seen before. (NOTE : I imagine spiralling projections of INDIAN MANDALAS). In this state she meats THE BOY, the lazy ne'er-do-well of folk-tale, the ever-wandering JACK. He plays music upon his pipe; she dances in a frenzied delirium; she undresses and they make love. Exeunt The Boy, leaving The Nun sleeping in the meadow. When she wakes she finds she no longer has any need of God or Religion, much less pilgrimage. She burns her habit, hair shirt, scapula, veil and wimple and dances away laughing, symbolically naked (FLESHINGS!) into the rising mists.