Erotic Fragments

These are live recordings of six movements of Erotic Fragments by Martin Eastwood. They were performed at St Pancras Parish Church on Friday 15 May 2015 by William Petter Tenor and Peter Foggitt Piano.

These are six short songs which are set to texts from the biblical Song of Songs. There is debate over how the texts should be interpreted; in some traditions, they are seen more as allegorical representations of the relationship between God and Israel, or between Christ and his church, as husband and wife. The composer reads the poetry as love poetry, not as typology or allegory, describing the fragments as ‘songs of erotic longing and desire, but not fulfilment’.

Eastwood groups the various poems in the following manner:

  • Awakening to the call of the beloved;
  • Imagined arrival of the beloved;
  • Expectation disappointed, but then …
  • … Renewed;
  • Hearing the wooing voice of the beloved;
  • Returning to a state of readiness to depart with him.