DESCRIPTION:
BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus,
Conducted by Michael Gielen

Premier performance, December 12, 1979, Royal Festival Hall, London

The first of four choral "pillars" for Goehr's opera, Behold the Sun, about the rise and fall of radical Anabaptists in Munster, Germany, 1534-35.

The biblical text (in Latin) is from Revelation 18.2

"Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird."

The painting is a detail from "The Last Judgement" by Hieronymus Bosch.