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Programme Note

The Second Coming is perhaps the most awesome warning in the English language of what might happen if the whole world turns its back on God. “The falcon cannot hear the falconer; things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world..” so wrote one of the greatest poets of the 20th century, W.B. Yeats.

Yeats was both a visionary and a poet of Tradition. His frightening vision of “A shape with lion body and the head of a man” is a symbol of evil, and a warning; but also a Prayer, at The End Point.

John Tavener