Oxen of the Sun - Eoghan Desmond

Quoting a fragment of text from Chapter 14 of James Joyce’s Ulysses, composer Eoghan Desmond portrays childbirth as a divine mystery. The greeting fanfare of a solo horn in tandem with the choir depicts a mystical incantation by doctors in Dublin’s Holles Street Maternity Hospital – ‘Deshil Holles Eamus/clockwise we go’, in other words, ‘while we wait for the mother to give birth, we will proceed in a clockwise manner’. The birthing begins with active music on the words ‘send us bright one, light one, Hornhorn, quickening and wombfruit’.

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