This is the second of three ‘Scenes from Ovid’ for choir based on texts derived from his Metamorphosis; the first was ‘Feathers’ (a description of the Sirens) and the third, entitled ‘Flight’, draws upon the tale of Daedalus and Icarus.

In ‘Fell’, we hear of the story of the hunter Actaeon who was transformed into a stag by goddess Diana, because he saw her bathing, and who met a grisly end when he was devoured by his own hunting dogs. Most of the spoken and sung text is drawn directly from Ovid, but the final refrain – in ‘mock Tudor’ style – uses words from the first act of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.

The title refers to the ‘fall’ of Actaeon, but also to the adjective describing sudden horror (as in ‘one fell swoop’). Fell is also an archaic English word for the soft hide of a dog or deer. ‘Fell’ was composed in the spring of 2022, for Soon Amore Acapella Choir, their conductor Chris Bartram, and hornist Martin Lawrence.