John is caught up in the fight between lust and staying true to his wife. The Girl he waited for was gone, his personal cheerleader was gone, and the person who believed in him more than he believed in himself was gone! She didn’t listen to him anymore, she didn’t care about his wants and needs, all she did was fight and scold. With their marriage dead for the past four years and John finding a new best friend - who is everything Abby was in the beginning - who could blame her? Christian fiction LOVES a fallen man so that there is a chance for his redemption. I'm more than a bit weary of that whole cycle because of the women who get pressured (mentally, emotionally, spiritually, institutionally) into keeping their unfaithful men and supporting them through their transgressions. Regardless of the cost to the women. Puts a bad taste in my mouth.

Roth’s long relationship with Jeffrey Skidmore and Ex Cathedra has already yielded the exceptional Shared Ground (Signum, 2011), and their follow-up collaboration is even stronger. A Time to Dance is an hour-long cantata for a quartet of SATB soloists, choir and orchestra (here a Baroque band, inspired by the work’s original commission as a companion piece for Bach’s Magnificat), with all the makings of a modern classic—a work you’d want to perform and, crucially, perform again. This may be a rather unfair question to ask a composer about their own work, but do you have a favourite movement from this cantata? The influence of Bach arose from the simple fact that the new work was to be premiered alongside a performance of Bach’s Magnificat, and so it was a given that I would compose for the same forces: soloists, choir, and an orchestra of two flutes, two oboes (each doubling on oboe d’amore), bassoon, three trumpets, timpani, strings and a small ‘continuo’ organ. The only change I made was for the percussionist to put aside Bach’s timpani in favour of a pair of handbells to toll the passing hours, and an array of unpitched instruments to add a dash of colour where appropriate (such as the obbligato parts for desk bell, washboard and dinner gong in No 16). Composing for ‘period instruments’ was a fascinating challenge (most noticeable in the valveless trumpets with their limited range of notes), and I am most grateful to the members of the Ex Cathedra Baroque Ensemble for their advice. Blessed are ye that hunger now: for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh…A Time to Dance' is a compelling, evocative & highly captivating drama set in and around The Lake District, Cumbria, England. Composer Alec Roth may be UK-based and of Irish/German descent, but it’s America that provides the musical heritage for his 2012 cantata A Time to Dance, recorded here for the first time by Ex Cathedra. The music is richly melodic, twitching with rhythmic energy, with wide harmonic vistas conjured up by even more widely spaced modal harmonies; Copland lies on the horizon of so much of its vibrant directness, shaded by the occasional bluesy nod to Gershwin and even Sondheim. Well, it’s clear that the years I spent in the study and practice of Javanese gamelan music have been a huge influence. What interests me is adapting the deeper structures and compositional principles of gamelan music to Western resources. Steve Reich put it quite neatly: "one can study the rhythmic structure of non-Western music and let that study lead where it will, while continuing to use the instruments, scales and any other sounds one has grown up with". One of the most formative things I grew up with was singing, so I feel very much at home composing vocal/choral music. But when I come to work in a new medium, I take time to study with a master in that form. So when I was commissioned to compose a string quartet, for example, I spent a lot of time listening to Haydn. A Time to Dance is my first attempt at a cantata. I’m keen to do more, and so I’m now spending a lot of time listening to Bach. I spent a considerable time researching and assembling the text, whittling down over one hundred poems to the final choice of twenty-nine, drawn from a wide variety of sources ranging from Ovid to Aphra Behn. The choice was made not just by the suitability of the texts, but also by how they speak to each other. I followed my usual practice of taking the poems for a walk, listening to their melodies and rhythms, and learning how they might dance. Apart from the text, however, the main influences on the music of A Time to Dance were Shakespeare, Bach and Skidmore. A Time to Dance’ is perhaps a perfect short story, a small contained work that manages to evoke Edinburgh while invoking Ireland, to conjure up childhood without ignoring a mother’s concerns, and is yet another Scottish tale about an absent father. ( Celia , On the Island , Shuggie Bain ). It also reaches into myth with a story of blindness that is likely to bring to mind Oedipus, and concludes with a biblical quotation from Ecclesiastes. It is also sensorially rich and offers too the occasional examples of witty defamiliarisation and restricted, even unreliable narration.

For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. A Time to Dance was first performed in Sherborne Abbey on 9 June 2012 by Ex Cathedra, conducted by Jeffrey Skidmore. The work was commissioned to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Summer Music Society of Dorset, founded by its President and Artistic Director, Dione Digby, in 1963. The brief was to provide a large-scale, celebratory work, reflecting the passage of time and fifty years of music-making. The seed that set my creative juices flowing was the text which Lady Digby suggested as a possible starting point—the well-known passage from Ecclesiastes which I have used for the opening Processional. This lovely, profoundly human text provided the four key themes which permeate the whole work: times; seasons; love; dance. Here young Nelson is in the first year of secondary school - or would be if he turned up. Much of the time he is skiving, a continuation it seems of his primary school avoidance where his mother almost went to court over his absences. The story doesn't make much of this avoidance, but we can glean from it that Nelson is a solitary child with poor sight, who has to wear a patch to protect his eyes. MacLaverty doesn't tell us the disease but we can work it for ourselves based on the name of the patches he has to wear: Opticludes which are worn when people have amblyopia, weak vision in one eye, or basically a squint. If Oedipus blinds himself late in life realising that he has slept with his mother and killed his father, Nelson has poor eyesight early in life but, in a way, this is Oedipus Rex retold. from the book: "They are the perfect couple-envied by their friends, cherished by their children, admired by their peers. But John and Abby Reynolds know they are pretending to be happy. In fact, they're waiting for the right time to tell the kids they're going to divorce. But at the family meeting where they plan toe tell their children, Nicole shares a surprise of her own; she's getting married. How can they spoil her joy with their announcement? They can pretend a little longer - until after the wedding. But questions begin to haunt them as the date draws nearer. What happened to the love and commitment that held them together for so long? Is it still there somewhere under all the pain and misunderstanding? And is it still possible, alone in the moonlight on an old wooden pier, to once more find..a time to dance? "A strong quartet of soloists move through the seasons: Grace Davidson is bright, spring soprano, Samuel Boden sensuous, Brittenish summer; Matthew Venner’s countertenor is autumn and bass Greg Skidmore completes the year as winter. All come together with the massed forces of Ex Cathedra (on typically fine form) for a stately Globe-style jig, bringing this immensely attractive cycle to its exuberant close. One of the things I most enjoy about performances at Shakespeare’s Globe on London’s Bankside is that when the play is over, the actors and musicians cap it with a celebratory after-dance or ‘jig’ in the Shakespearean tradition—a wonderful way of bringing performers and audience together in a communal letting-down-of-the-hair. After spending fifty minutes singing about dance, I thought it would be fun to have my singers lay down their music scores (I ensure they have to do this by giving them some hand-clapping to do), and actually dance. My After-dance sets words by Shakespeare’s contemporary John Davies, in which the very creation of the world itself is accomplished through dance (and, of course music). In A Time to Dance, Karen Kingsbury paints a portrait of a Christian family with a crumbling foundation. As John and Abby struggle to avoid each other through the course of their daughter’s engagement, they turn not only from one another but also from God. They ignore or refute his promptings, even while wondering why He no longer cares to give them comfort. Both are mired deeply in a web of pride and self-pity, refusing to give, becoming more and more bitter. So why 3 stars? The story gripped me and I couldn't put it down. I appreciate that kind of writing in fiction.

Choral societies are hungry beasts and there are only so many Rutter Glorias they can consume. With A Time to Dance Roth has provided a serious alternative—a contemporary work of real character and energy. People who enjoy reading religious books would enjoy this novel, as it explores ones’ own sense of religion, making the reader question oneself about how they had treated their religion. Also, people who enjoy romance novels would enjoy this book. Instead of it being a book about two people falling in love, it’s about two people having to learn how to fall in love again to make a good example for their family. People who enjoy reading a long, slightly more challenging read would also enjoy this book because it makes a person question their own morals on multiple levels. Generally anyone who enjoys a good book that challenges their mind would thoroughly enjoy this book. The class Nelson goes to is on religious education and the teacher quotes a passage from the bible with its lines, "a time to kill and a time to heal; a time to wear down and a time to build...a time to mourn and a time to dance..." The school is the religiously named St John the Baptist and the time for dancing that Nelson has half-seen and half-understood was a baptism of sorts if we take it colloquially to mean an initiation. Nelson may not quite know what that means for a couple of years more but it is one of those events that can seem more consequential retrospectively than at the time, as the boy will come to understand his mum is a sex worker on anti-depressants, while he is well-aware of being a truant with a squint eye. It is a story full of pathos but MacLaverty's achievement is to allow us to view it too as a tale of two hypocrites who want to keep from each other what they do with their days. MacLaverty asks us not to judge but to allow the sadness to seep in

Musically this is a gloriously eclectic piece, with milonga-inspired movements sitting along Philip-Glass-esque polyrhythms, all set within the mould of Baroque-derived instrumentation. What would you say are the most significant influences on your compositional style? A Time to Dance' is perhaps a perfect short story, a small contained work that manages to evoke Edinburgh while invoking Ireland, to conjure up childhood without ignoring a mother's concerns, and is yet another Scottish tale about an absent father. ( Celia , On the Island , Shuggie Bain ). It also reaches into myth with a story of blindness that is likely to bring to mind Oedipus, and concludes with a biblical quotation from Ecclesiastes. It is also sensorially rich and offers too the occasional examples of witty defamiliarisation and restricted, even unreliable narration. Honestly! John and Abby are seen by everyone around them as the perfect married couple. They have been married for 22 years and have no idea how to communicate??? What have they been doing in all that time? I recognize that people can grow apart, but these two never make any attempt to actually talk to each other. They just make accusations and suffer hurt feelings. I wouldn't say I have a perfect marriage, but we do TALK to one another, and there is mutual respect, meaning we listen to the other point of view, even if we don't agree. Is that actually a rare thing in the world?