I was enchanted by Christine Renaudat’s recording of her daughter aged 9 reciting Jean De La Fontaine’s version of the old Aesop’s Fable - The Wolf and the Lamb.  Her daughter was born in Colombia and Christine home schooled her in French. She was teaching her all about her homeland of France talking about animals she could “barely imagine” (wolves and sheep) and learning the names of the French rivers, plants and the seasons,.  As part of the course, she recorded her daughter in Cartagena reciting this story that she had learnt as a child.

The lovely idea of passing on skills, knowledge and memories from our past to our children is a very beautiful sharing, allowing them in turn pass on their heritage and traditions.

Finding the translation of the poem (see below) and the moral of the fable that “The tyrant can always find an excuse for his tyranny and that the unjust will not listen to the reasoning of the innocent”, I knew that this powerful story might relate to millions of people in the world being displaced and forced to migrate from their homeland by tyrannical regimes.

I wanted the piece to feel like an old story being told, that leads the listener through an imaginary landscape to a dramatic ending. The child’s voice was so beautiful that I wanted to keep the narration of the vocal as it was - if you listen closely you can hear the birds singing in the background.  I used several reverbs on the voice and inserted music between phrases to extend the track.

The piece starts with a solo violin and leads the listener through an imaginary landscape.  The harmony is folk like in its simplicity with a simple piano like ostinato, whilst the melodies are deliberately emotional to evoke a sense of vulnerability and dark power.  Cello solos are featured between the storytelling to add to the emotion, supported by slow moving string parts.  Layers of agitated strings with grainy swells add to the drama as the piece builds to the climax when the wolf carries the lamb into the woods “and then eats him without any other why or wherefore”.