Peter Dickinson's Mass of the Apocalypse is ingenious both in imagery and technique. Scored for soloists, chorus, piano and percussion, it combines the sung text of the Mass (in English) with spoken passages from the Book of Revelation: the Sanctus is associated with St John's vision of a new Heaven and a new earth, the atoning Lamb of the Agnus Dei with the Lamb ''that shall lead them … unto living fountains of waters'', and so on. It was written For parish rather than concert-hall performance and goes more than half way to meet choir and congregation by its use of regular pulse and of frequent ostinato figures, making for textures that are rich but basically simple to comprehend and to perform. Typically the choir sing in long, hymn; or chant-like note values (save in the very rapid Gloria) over a shimmering, gamelan-like texture from the instruments. It is quasi-minimalist, in fact, but in a way that is as closely related to the devout repetitive processes of Christian ritual (to the concluding ''Alleluias'' in Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms, for example) as to anything in Reich or Glass.
Outcry owes something to minimalism, too, and on the same pretext of directness: it is a cantata of protest at man's cruelty to animals. Repetition is used here, however, in a variety of ways: to suggest the unchanging rituals of nature, which man disrupts (Blake's A robin redbreast in a cage/puts all Heaven in a rage), to evoke the horribly alluring excitement of mass violence (a crowd baiting a badger to death); and to convey (in the final section) John Clare's vision of creation unanimous in its praise of God and condemnation of all-polluting Man. Two earnestly expressive and more lyrically expansive 'arias' (to poems by Hardy about a blinded linnet and the transport of horses to a battlefield) provide contrast but do not dissipate the tension.
The Unicorns is a six-movement suite, derived from an abandoned opera, for the unlikely but striking combination of soprano solo and brass band. The plot of the opera seems to have been a sort of environmentalist fable, and the lyricism of the graver pages of Outcry reappears in the three vocal movements, but here more expansive, more optimistic even, alternating with frankly catchy syncopated tuckets from the brass. The final movement, with its gravely eloquent soprano line over a calm, ostinato-based accompaniment describes an earthly paradise where unicorns (and all other endangered species, presumably) can live without fear. It is a beautiful piece, beautifully sung, and a very satisfying conclusion to the sequence of works as a whole.
The performances are decent (that of The Unicorns is more than decent: Soderstrom's vulnerable plangency is just what this music needs) and the recordings are excellent. If the Green movement is looking for anthems, it will find them here.'