Davies's passion opens with the “Sophia Oracle”: three female voices yoked together in rhythmic unisons, who sound “almost like a synthesiser” – a “non-human,unified presence”.

Composer Tansy Davies has spent the past five years obsessed with one woman. She’s read about her, researched her, imagined her, travelled in her footsteps and written music in response to the figure she describes as “very complex, very powerful”; an individual with “so many sides to her, so many stories, so many things written and said about her”. The woman in question? Mary Magdalene. Davies can’t pinpoint the start of her personal fascination. “It’s something that has grown through me over the years,” she explains. “She’s very much aligned with my own spirituality. I’ve always been interested in mystical things and esoteric practices – other ways of being spiritual outside the norms.”

Get Instant Access

Continue Reading

Register for free to read this article in full

REGISTER

Subscribe for unlimited access

SUBSCRIBE NOW

From just £37.50 quarterly

  Print copy of The Tablet delivered directly to your door.
  Complete access to all Tablet website content including all premium content.
  Access to the weekly digital copy of The Tablet.
  Full access to The Tablet’s archive – over 180 years of back issues.

Already a subscriber? Login