I first saw an image of the Fadden More Psalter in a newspaper article, clarted in mud and peat, resembling what can only be described as a lasagne, with faint letters, perhaps bits of words, barely decipherable and I knew immediately there was a piece buried in there somewhere.

When I was asked by the Dunedin Consort to compose a Cantata, there was no question that this wouldn’t be a suitable subject matter. I loved the idea of setting these fragments of Psalms to music (I had already experiments with the fragmentation of older texts in previous vocal pieces) but realised I needed something more, a contemporary view, to counterbalance this unearthed object. Conventionally, there is a strong element of storytelling in Cantatas and I needed a guide to take us, the listener, onto and into the bog itself.

I have been aware of the writing of the Marina Carr for many years and it could be argued that no Irish writer has delved as deep into the dark histories and mysteries of bogs as she has in such works as Portia Coughlan, Bog of Cats and many others. As we worked together and talked about what the piece could ultimately be, it was clear that she was moved by the stories surrounding bog bodies – those corpses discovered semi-preserved by the bog, their lives having often come to violent ends. Who were these people? How did they end up there?

In the end, Marina gave me a wonderful rich text where these stories were given a voice but crucially, so too was the bog itself. It is the central character in this drama, withholding secrets, protecting, nurturing, divulging when it sees fit. I realised that what I needed to do as a composer was, rather than setting texts from the Pslater itself, was to imagine a piece of music that had itself been buried for centuries in the bog and dug up. I asked my father, who grew up in Croghan, right in the middle of the Bog Of Allen in Ireland, to name the first tune that came to his mind when I mentioned that place and he said ‘The Lark in the clear air’. I subjected that music to the same process of obfuscation, redaction preservation and decay that the bog had upon the Psalter so that what we hear in Bog Cantata often seems familiar yet incomplete – there is a puzzle to be solved. Fragments of a melody, snatches of harmony, grace notes floating on the air, lines buried in the peat.