After a hundred years

Jennifer Bastable’s After a hundred years is written for SSATB voices. This secular English partsong sets a text that contemplates the passage of time and the eventual fading of even intense human experience. The poem speaks of how nature reclaims places where significant events once occurred, with only faint traces left for future observers to ponder. Bastable’s music seeks to capture this sense of quiet reflection and nature’s enduring presence, allowing the layered voices to evoke the atmosphere of a place forgotten by humanity but remembered by the elements. The choral writing explores a subtle interplay between the vocal lines, mirroring the gentle but persistent forces of nature described in the lyrics.