‘A Linden Antiphon’ was commissioned in 2021 by Jonathan Louth to be set to music by Alex Woolf for ArchiCantiores and the Master Carvers’ Association, with first readings and performances during the Grinling Gibbons’ Society’s festival year marking the tercentenary of Grinling Gibbons’ death.
A Linden Antiphon
by Paul Munden
Our human hearts
take solace and shelter
within forests of stone.
The linden trees
must rise elsewhere.
But lift up your thoughts
to the interleaving
linden voices
in the gracefully carved
and cloistered air.
‘While human habitation comes at a price for the natural world, human art sometimes repays the debt. In pondering Grinling Gibbons’ extraordinary achievement using limewood for his work in St Paul’s Cathedral and elsewhere, I found myself believing that the trees live on – in the collaborative arts of music and carving that characterise the spaces in which
we praise.’ – Paul Munden