WFH: DAY 110. 8.15 am: A communion. 8.45 am: The inbox’s contents could wait until tomorrow. 9.00 am: I reacquainted myself with Jones’s account of the psalm-singing spirits. They were experienced by a Dissenter named David Thomas of Pant, Carmarthenshire. One night he went into a small room adjoining his house to read Scripture and pray. The room became illuminated so brightly that the light of his candle was completely swallowed up. Within that great light he saw a company of children in bright clothes singing in Welsh. But he remembered only one part of their song: ‘Pa hyd? Pa hyd? Dychwelwch feibion Adda’ [‘How long? How long? Return ye sons of Adam’] (a phrase reminiscent of Psalm 90 and verse 3.) After which, Thomas lost sight of them until, again, the visitation was repeated. On this occasion they sang: ‘Pa hyd? Pa hyd, yr erlidiwch Gristionogion duwiol?’ [‘How long? How long, will ye persecute the godly Christians?’].

Jones provides a gloss on the character of the music: ‘Here appears no gingle [jingle] in the singing, so that it appears like the anthem way of singing or rather after the manner of the ancient Hebrews (in which there was little or no gingle, but tunes adjusted to the parts and measure of the words sung)’. Quite how he’d deduced that is unclear. The witness’s experience had taken place in the century before Jones was born. Nevertheless, the description helpfully provides parameters and ideas for the realisation of the sound of singing spirits:

11.30 am: Into the studio to begin considering a practical response to the account. I made a recording of the two phrases that the witness had remembered the spirits singing, speaking slowly and deliberately. The process was repeated, while reading the texts with different inflections (emphasizing vowels and playing-down consonants) and pitches, and faster and slower rates of delivering. Out of this material, it was envisaged, elements of musicality might arise.

1.30 pm: An afternoon of sample extraction, to create notes with a definite pitch and mellifluousness:

4.30 pm: An ambulation:

‘Spoons had reopened this week. There was a queue of the unmasked outside. The restaurant area (which is a more than generous description of the establishment) is now divided into cubicles. I still wouldn’t be confident eating there. Signs of the times:

7.30 pm: I determined to complete my presentation PowerPoint. One more slide, and I was done with it. (In the background: Miles Davis’ Agharta (1975).)