The original version of Missa tiburtina (of which Tiburtina Corona is a development) was commissioned in 1985 by the International Kodaly Society for their Youth Choir, and premiered (but without the Gloria) at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London on 21^st July 1985, conducted by John Poole.  The Gloria was added later that year, and the full version was performed at the 1986 Proms by the BBC Singers under my direction. It has since been frequently performed and recorded. However, since a twenty-minute a cappella choral piece is taxing for all but the most experienced choirs, I have felt for some time that a version with saxophone quartet would make it more widely available and perhaps add punch and pungency. The arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020 coincided with my creating the new version.

As most people born before 1970 will remember, Ethiopia suffered a disastrous famine between 1983 to 1985. Caused partly by drought and partly by inhuman government policies, it killed more than a million people and orphaned 200,000 children. Public opinion was horrified by the suffering of the Ethiopian people – a biblical disaster unfolding (for the first time in history) on prime-time TV – and donations poured into charities and relief agencies. For many people in the rich countries of northern Europe it was the first time they had been confronted by the cost to the world’s poor of the luxuries taken for granted by the rich; and ever since 1985 it has been impossible to ignore the ethical implications of affluence.

Having married a West African in 1984, I was already aware of the difficulties of existence in the Third World, and familiar with the economic  realities which caused them and the economic doctrines  which exacerbated them (this was the high point of Friedmanite monetarist policies and the fiction of “trickle-down” Reaganomics in the attitude of the rich countries towards poor countries). It was also the period when the threat of untrammelled economic growth to our already fragile environment became impossible to ignore.