Bird Raptures, a set of three pieces which draw inspiration stylistically from twentieth-century partsong, was composed for St Martin’s Voices in spring 2025, especially for Lucy Walker’s debut album (Resonus, RES10361). The text for The Nightingale, Christina Rossetti’s poem Bird Raptures, from which the set takes its title, lulls the listener with a lilting metre, and describes the captivating power of a nightingale’s song to connote both sorrow and joy. This setting is an invented folks...