It's the second of January

I have decided that my new year's resolutions will begin on January 4th. I'm visiting lots of friends between now and then and it would be rude not to at least offer to finish everyone's unwanted Quality Streets! My aim from January 4th is to lose weight and eat only proper food. I have also decided to find more time to relax but promised to work even harder and always to the very best of my ability. I guess all creative people thrive on the idea of leaving a legacy, and as I'm unlikely to have children, I guess that can only happen through my writing, which means I need to keep pushing those boundaries and constantly trying to work outside my comfort zone. Crumbs. So I'm writing a 40 part motet! 40 vocal lines, each one entirely unique. Is that even possible? And is it just me, or is it really hard to type motet without typing motel by mistake? 40 part motel. 40 room motel. Am I just too trashy to be writing this kind of stuff?

Looking at Pepys' diary, I see 350 years ago, on the 2nd January 1660, he had a typically busy day. At that time, he was incredibly poor. I know how he feels. He'd married for love, a French girl called Elizabeth, who was much younger and from a family even poorer than his. They lived in the draughty turret of a house in Axe Yard, in Westminster. Pepys calls it a garret. They had a maid, Jane, but Elizabeth did much of the work around the house. When the diary begins, Pepys is hopeful that Elizabeth is pregnant. He longed for children, but children never came. He works as a humble clerk. His patron, ("My Lord") Edward Mountagu, later the Earl of Sandwich, is his cousin.

Pepys never stops. He's a bundle of energy and walks everywhere; usually from Westminster to the City and back again. He visits friends, hangs out in cafes and taverns, and observes everything he passes en route. He never stops observing. So much of our knowledge of the minutiae of 17th Century London life is down to what he wrote.

On the 2nd of January he spends a day pottering. There's not much to do at work, so he walks around Westminster Hall (which in those days was a bustling meeting place lined with shops and stalls). He borrows money for himself and collects money on behalf of Mountagu. He drinks ale and eats nothing but bread and cheese until late at night, when his wife cuts him a slice of brawn (which he declares, in typical Pepys superlative fashion is "as good as ever I had any"). He learns how to play cribbage and sings until 9pm with friends.

Pepys loved music. Music regularly sends him into a state of near ecstasy. Countless pages of his diary are filled with descriptions of concerts, street performances, sung masses, theatre pieces, evenings spent playing music by candlelight, long summer days spent singing on boats, under trees, at dusk with his wife and the nightingales in the garden. He made judgements about people based on how well they could sing. He played many instruments and even composed.

So what better way to celebrate the diary than by turning it into a choral work? A busy contrapuntal choral work with 40 different vocal lines representing the effervescence of his writing; the constant flitting from place to place and thought to thought.

But am I really capable of doing this? Do I know enough about music? Do I understand the diary well enough to set it to music? Which passages will I choose? Will I choose the right ones? And this is the point at which I need to take a leaf out of Pepys' book...

Pepys believed that anything was possible. He was astonishingly optimistic. He lived in perhaps the most complicated and difficult political times and dealt with death, disease and constant pain on a daily basis, yet he remained resolutely optimistic and succeeded. I go into a sulk when I haven't eaten for four hours! Time for me to get outside and start walking 'round London before the sun sets on this beautiful crisp, sunny day! First stop Westminster Hall, after a brief appointment with a banana, which no doubt shall prove to be the finest banana I have ever sampled!

And a happy New Year to you, too at 00.30

Blessed be to God, at the end of the last decade I was in very good health, except for a slight tenderness in my side, which I put down to clumsily rushing into a doorhandle at my friend Matt's house or possibly attempting to toboggan down Parliament Hill at 2 o'clock in the morning. Fortunately there was snow on the ground. Unfortunately I didn't have a toboggan.

In 2009 the condition of the State was thus. Viz the House of Commons, a load of wimps, desperate to stay in power at all costs and corrupt to the core. Most of the good people of Great Britain wish they'd go away, but most of us are too busy voting on the X factor to think of alternatives.

My own private condition very handsome. I live in Highgate with my partner, an actor called Nathan. Most of our neighbours are rich. We are poor, but content. I write music and work with communities across the country to create little pieces of documentary musical magic. At least I hope that's what we create.

The mission for 2010: To compose a 40-part motet based on Samuel Pepys' diary; that astonishing piece of literature which was started 350 years ago on this very day. What an incredible thought!

What is a 40-part motet? There aren't many of them in the musical canon, probably because you have to be mad to write one. The most famous is Spem In Alium by Thomas Tallis, which I think, by its title, must have something to do with onions. The lyrics might be a bit fancy, but it's an incredible piece of music, which almost makes me stop breathing. A motet is a choral work, usually based on a religious text. To me Pepys' Diary is a religious text.

My work will hopefully be performed at St Olave's Church in London; the church where Pepys worshipped and was buried.

I aim to have this work premiered by the end of the year, but in order for this to happen, I will need to raise a small sum of money and find 40 remarkable singers, from a wide range of traditions including gospel, folk, early music, musical theatre and opera. Each choir will respresent a different aspect of Samuel Pepys' character and life. They will sing direct passages from his diary. It's going to be a nightmare to organise on my own!

Am I capable of writing a 40-part motet? Who knows! Will I find funding in this recession-torn climate? I hope so! Will the project make me lose my mind? Probably!

This blog will accompany me on this ambitious and terrifying journey!

Likelihood of success: 50%
Likelihood of going mad during the process: 93%

And, with the sounds of ABBA's Happy New Year drifting in from next door, so to bed.