Blest pair of Sirens, pledges of Heav'n's joy,
Sphere-born harmonious sisters, Voice and Verse,
Wed your divine sounds, and mixed pow'r employ,
Dead things with inbreathed sense able to pierce.
John Milton, ‘At a Solemn Musick’
About me
I’m Director of Music at Peterhouse, Cambridge, where I direct the college choir. I also research early modern English literature. I’m using this substack to bring those two parts of my life together, to think about what happens when words meet music. I’m interested in the ways in which composers think about the texts they set, and about the ways poets write about and for music.
I’ve already written about some of these questions in my first book, George Herbert and Early Modern Musical Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2022), which explores the relationship between Herbert’s poetry and his practices as a priest and musician in the early seventeenth century. I’ve recently become the General Editor of Scintilla, a peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the work of the poet Henry Vaughan and his alchemist twin Thomas Vaughan, which also publishes new poetry in the metaphysical tradition.
With the Choir of Little St Mary’s, Cambridge I recorded His Sweet Art in 2014, an album of musical settings of poetry by Herbert and his contemporaries. With the Choir of Peterhouse, Cambridge, I’ve recently released Music from the Peterhouse Partbooks (Naxos, 2025), an album of music intended for use in the Chapel of Peterhouse in the 1630s, preserved in manuscripts in the college’s library. You can find various other recordings from me and the Choir of Peterhouse on Spotify.
From time-to-time I also compose and arrange music: you can find more details about my published compositions here.
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