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Programme Note

Robert Aickman was an English author who published no more than 48 short stories between 1951 and his death in 1981 together with a single novel and a volume of autobiography. He is still revered by many as one of the greatest writers of supernatural stories that ever lived, yet his name is barely known in the mainstream. This in itself means relatively little - England's literary establishment has long been guilty of looking down on anything that smacks of 'genre writing' as being somehow juvenile and vulgar. If ever a writer existed who disproved such crass chauvinism then it is Robert Aickman.
His collections of stories contain some of the most extraordinary and affecting fiction I have ever read. His precise, slightly mannered style is reminiscent of Iris Murdoch and his subject matter often recalls John Fowles but the truth is he was a one-off, possession of a voice that is utterly unique, Although he worked in the area of the supernatural, his stories have little to do with ghosts, vampires, ghouls or monsters. Rather, he would carefully manipulate atmosphere through a slow accumulation of strange details often building to an inexplicably shattering climax that would make you want to turn straight back to the beginning to find out how he got there. He regularly alluded to mythology, art, literature and even opera and his real interest was not the uncanny but the unconscious. He understood, perhaps more than any other writer in his field, how the former was the perfect metaphor for the latter.
When Joby Talbot first asked me if I would be interested in providing the libretto for an oratorio, I had little idea what we might choose as our subject. To be honest, I barely knew what an oratorio was. I remember murdering ST MATTHEW PASSION in the school choir but that was about it. I also recalled a spoof choral piece called HORRORTORIO where the older boys had dressed as mummies and warewolves. Something about that lodged in my head and I thought 'wouldn't it be good to try and scare an audience for real' - after all there's nothing scarier than scary music (I still shiver when I think about the 'Night on the Bare Mountain' segment of FANTASIA). Joby had proved he could do spooky on the first series of THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN so I knew it might be something that would interest him. Aickman was the fisrt writer I thought of, and THE SAME DOG was the first story that presented itself.
Joby was excited as I as I was at the possibility. I outlined the story for him and he responded with a genuine frisson. Gosh, I thought, if I can get that reaction sitting in The Coach and Horses how might it be with a 120-strong choir in Barbican.
The Challenge would be to keep the narrative comprehensible, whilst retaining Aickman's style and atmosphere. I think when Joby saw my first attempt he had to restrain himself from giving me the boot. Thankfully I was allowed a second chance. I decided that somewhere in Aickman's text there was a libretto struggling to get out. Carefully we went about finding it. It was rather like trying to remove a fossil from the stone it is embedded in, chipping away with great caution because you are all too aware that one false move will cause the whole skeleton to shatter.
By January, a year or so after Joby first approached me, we had something we were both satisfied with. And then I left him get on with the real work of writing the score.
What Mr Aickman would think of all this I don't know. I take confort from the fact that he was a well-known opera lover, which made the whole project seem somehow appropriate, and that he might have appreciated our intentions if not our methodology.

© Jeremy Dyson