The music of Anna Clyne, born in London and living in New York, has been performed all over the world. Her scores exude uncommon emotional energy, combined with an intense spirituality. She has offered the following remarks on This Moment, one of the latest additions to her fast-growing catalog:

This Moment is inspired by the calligraphy of Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Zen Master, and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh, who passed away in January 2022 at the age of 95. It is a meditation on his words “this moment is full of wonders.” This Moment is also a response to our collective grief and loss in recent years, and borrows two moments from Mozart’s Requiem, the work with which This Moment was premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin in July 2023.

“The meditation on death is a very important meditation. When you meditate on death, you love life more, you cherish life more. We can learn many lessons from it.” – Thich Nhat Hanh.

The first moment borrowed from Mozart’s Requiem is an ascending chromatic line in the sopranos, and the fugal subject in the basses, from Kyrie. The second borrowed moment is the instrumental introduction to Lacrimosa from Sequentia. The first line of the text, which translates as “Full of tears will be that day,” reminds me of Thich Nhat Hanh’s words that “the tears I shed yesterday have become rain.”

— Peter Laki