A leading Welsh composer has added her voice to the growing outcry over pollution in the River Wye. Eloise Gynn has written a piece of choral music entitled Wye, which will be performed in Monmouth next month. This includes a Lament for the Wye, as well as more positive sections recalling the joys of the river in its previous glory. The composition forms part of a concert by Monmouth Choral Society at St Mary’s Priory Church, Monmouth, at 7.30pm on Saturday 6 June, conducted by Steven Kings with Sam Bayliss, piano, and Rebecca Chellappah, mezzo-soprano.

Eloise Gynn explained that as an artist who draws deeply from nature, she feels a responsibility to respond when it faces destruction. “I find nature deeply beautiful, and I love being outside: the air, the light, the colours, life growing. It naturally makes me sad that humans are causing habitat loss and extinction; this is the context I am composing in, just as other composers will be shaped by the context of their time. I’d love people to be moved by my music and inspired to make changes. You don’t always know whether you’re moving people, but I’m glad if it resonates. Whether it makes a difference is hard to say, but it’s worth trying!”

Wye was originally commissioned for Monmouth Male Voice Choir as part of the Welsh Government’s Adopt a Composer scheme, which pairs composers with community groups. Eloise Gynn continued: “I wanted the choir to feel ownership of it, and for it to be collaborative. I started from my love of nature, and the River Wye felt endless as a subject. Researching it also brought up the human history and environmental issues like eutrophication, and I also asked the singers what the River Wye meant to them.”

The first section, Kingfisher, evokes the blue flash of a passing kingfisher and the sound of the wind in riverbank trees, based on a poem by Clive Weatherby of the male voice choir. Words of the second section, Diatoms (Lament for the Wye), are taken, almost randomly, from an article by the environmental campaigner George Monbiot about the depletion of oxygen in the Wye threatening the slow death of all life in the river. The final section, Awakening, is in Welsh, based on cherished memories by choir members of the river in its previous condition, amid hopes that it will one day be restored to that glorious state.

Monmouth Choral Society gave the premiere of Eloise Gynn’s Wye in 2024 and this second performance will be part of a concert titled Songs of the Spirit. The 6 June concert will feature other works inspired by resistance and voices of those who often go unheard. These include John Rutter’s Feel the Spirit, a cycle of Spirituals that come out of the historical African American experience, and Loud He Sang the Psalm of David by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, the Black British composer of the early 20th century. Tickets are £15, under-18s free, available from monmouthchoralsociety.co.uk and on the door.