I did it!

I’m not sure I ever thought this day would come! It is now exactly 350 years since Pepys finished writing his famous journal - and nine and a half years since I started writing mine. Pepys wasn’t a hugely happy man on the 31st May, 1669. He stopped writing because he genuinely thought he was going blind. As it turns out, diligently writing his diary by candlelight had caused terrible eye-strain, so the less he wrote in the coming months, the more his sight improved.

I actually had the opportunity to hold his journals in the Pepys Library at Trinity College, Cambridge. It was incredibly sad to note that, when he started, his writing was small and very neat, but by the end, when his eyesight was failing, it was scruffy and about three times the size.

He wrote his diary for 9 1/2 years, during a hugely exciting time in British history. He personally witnessed the restoration of the British monarchy (and was actually on the very boat which brought Charles II from his exile in Holland back to the UK). He watched countless friends and colleagues die of the Great Plague, then gave us the most vivid accounts of the great fire of London, before documenting the Dutch invasion of the UK in 1667.

I remember hearing an historian talking about Pepys and saying that his diary gave us more colour than any other document of the time and that later decades just seemed that little bit less exciting without his accounts.

Pepys didn’t want his diaries to be read by others. He wrote in a form of shorthand, and used words in Italian, French and Latin to further obfuscate passages which offered lurid details about extra marital affairs.

If you read his official documents and letters, the language is considerably more florid, and, as a result, far more difficult to understand. His diary, by contrast, is plainly worded - adding grist to the notion that real people didn’t speak in Shakespearean tongue. If we travelled back in time to 17th Century London, we’d probably have a far greater understanding of what ordinary people were saying.

The last entry in Pepys’ Diary talks about preparing for a trip overseas. We know that he went to France during the summer of 1669, and sadly, that, whilst away, his wife contracted an illness and died. We don’t know how her death affected him, because, well, there’s no diary. She is buried in Saint Olave’s Church, London, where my Pepys Motet was first performed in November 2010. Pepys commissioned a bust of his wife which looks down on the church from high in the ceiling. It’s a hugely animated image, almost as though the long-suffering Elizabeth were nagging Pepys as much in death as she did in life.

The Pepys Motet was written in Leeds, London, New York and Miami from January to September 2010. It is a 6-movement work, originally scored for forty voices, which were made up of eight individual choirs of five singers, representing vocal traditions as diverse as gospel, folk, opera, musical theatre and early music. One of the choirs came from Trinity College, Cambridge (where Pepys studied) and another was formed of five Royal Navy officers, to represent Pepys’ day job as a Navy clerk. Each individual part is unique, so at times all forty voices are singing separate lines. We recorded five of the movements and performed three live at St Olaves. The last movement was performed in a circle around the audience, which was something of a coup de theatre.

The project genuinely nearly killed me. It’s the most ambitious and complicated work I’ve written in a career which has been somewhat defined by ambitious and complicated projects. We rehearsed during the autumn and I rehearsed each choir, many times, separately - travelling all over London, up to Cambridge and down to Devon often in terrible gales. I’m ashamed to say that I lost my rag on countless occasions! The stress of it all really got to me. The complete insanity of the period is documented in this blog, if you read back.

Three years later, I was able to re-write the piece as a twenty-part Motet which was released as a CD. It’s still one of my proudest achievements. It’s a highly quirky album, which is unlike anything you’re likely to have heard. And if you don’t have a copy, you can download one at all the usual places, or buy a physical copy on my website.

The final movement of the Pepys Motet includes the last, somewhat wistful, words which Pepys wrote - exactly 350 years ago - which I will quote almost in full because this date feels like such a milestone for me.

“And thus ends all that I doubt I shall ever be able to do with my own eyes in the keeping of my journal, I being not able to do it any longer, having done now so long as to undo my eyes almost every time that I take a pen in my hand; and, therefore, resolve, from this time forward, to have it kept by my people in long-hand, and must therefore be contented to set down no more than is fit for them and all the world to know...

And so I betake myself to that course, which is almost as much as to see myself go into my grave: for which, and all the discomforts that will accompany my being blind, the good God prepare me! May 31st, 1669. S.P.”

I would love to take this opportunity to thank all the singers who loyally came with me on the Pepys Motet journey, some of whom like Abbie and Michelle, have become friends for life. Out of the Pepys 40 came the Rebel Chorus who recorded the London Requiem and the Four Colours EP. This composition genuinely changed my life.

You can hear the last movement here (definitely one to listen to on headphones to hear all the sonic detail. Read the text, close your eyes and listen to the words whizzing around... )

This is me with the actual diary in 2010... seems like such a long time ago