Description

‚Avebury Stone Circles’ was commissioned by the soprano Suré Eloff for a performance at Texas Wesleyan University, USA, on October 24th, 2013, with John Fisher, piano.

The composer’s text was inspired by the Neolithic henge monument around the village of Avebury, Wiltshire, in southwest England, containing three stone circles.
The monument comprises a henge (a bank and a ditch), with an outer circle – one of Europe’s largest – and two separate smaller stone circles situated inside the centre of the monument. It was almost certainly constructed as the site of rituals and ceremonies. There are several older monuments nearby, including ‚West Kennet Long Barrow’ and ‚Silbury Hill’, the tallest prehistoric man-made mound in Europe.

Gregory Rose has imagined gatherings at these magnificent sites of pre-Christian priests, meeting for rituals, or casual assemblies of local communities.