Description
The Book of Miracles is a recently discovered 16th Century German manuscript made up of 167 surviving sheets, depicting in vivid detail miraculous signs, natural catastrophes and Christian myths. Bookended with depictions of biblical events including stories from the Old Testament and the Book of Revelation and overflowing with striking images of comets, fantastical beasts, miracles, celestial apparitions and other astronomical events, the manuscript is both an exceptional and unique work of renaissance art but also a comprehensive record of natural and supernatural phenomenon from antiquity to middle of the 16th Century. This collection of visually arresting illustrations is steeped in European folklore-inextricable events are playfully depicted with chimerical and wondrous detail. These images are at once strikingly modern -existing somewhere outside of time - and yet inhabit a world of myth and superstition that are inevitably linked to Christian mythology. From these images I have drawn inspiration for the four movements of this concerto. The piece won an Ivor Novello Award in 2019.
