Caroline Heaton, the librettist of this work, writes:
“Afterword is written in the form of questions, rather than exhortations or ‘information’, and is couched in very simple language, which leaves the audience free to reflect.”
The first two questions are posed by bass then soprano (in the first performance, recorded below, Paul Feldwick, then Jane Hunt), accompanied by a distant, textless choir. Three questions are then posed by the choir:
“… Whose decisions write and re-write history, inscribe laws that outlaw the oppressed?
Whose wounds speak volumes, whose injuries cry out for redress?
Who now has ears to hear, who now has a heart that is grief-possessed?”
before the bass and then the soprano soloists each sing the final question:
“Who now finds compassion still within himself?”
Malcolm Hill wrote the music (mj351) for this text in 2016, to be performed on 12th November 2016 in St. James’s Priory, Bristol, in aid of Freedom From Torture. Text and music both copyright of the authors.