A York Passion sets words adapted from the medieval text of the York Mystery
Cycle: a series of plays - dating from the early fourteenth century – which were
originally performed on carts in the streets of York on the feast of Corpus Christi
each year, by the merchants and craftsmen of the city’s guilds. I have borrowed from
several of the plays to form a short Passiontide sequence, from Christ’s entry into
Jerusalem through to his death and resurrection. It is not intended to be a
comprehensive version of the Easter story (there is no mention of Herod, for
example) since some of the plays do not easily lend themselves to a sung setting,
but together these pieces provide a re-telling of the narrative in the vivid and
colourful words of voices from the distant past.

The language is sometimes archaic (and often in a northern dialect) so in places I
have modernised it, but since the story is such a familiar one, and to preserve the
rhyming structure and the characteristic alliteration, I have left most of the original
text intact.

The movements are:
1. Entry into Jerusalem
2. Chorale
3. Peter’s Denial and Judas’ Plan
4. Before Pilate
5. Crucifixion
6. The Death of Christ
7. Pieta: Mary’s Lament
8. The Resurrection

A York Passion was composed over several months from 2023 to 2025 in York.
‘Crucifixion’ was given its first performance by the Elysian Singers in March 2024.