The Light of Paradise (2023)

Fourteen Devotions of Margery Kempe

By Paul Mealor - Composer, United Kingdom

The medieval mystic Margery Kempe (c. 1373–1448) was an extraordinary and controversial figure. Rejecting the conventional expectation for a woman of her day of marriage, she undertook extensive pilgrimages to sacred sites across Europe and the Middle East, often dressed in white.

Kempe understood her travels as divinely ordained trials and recorded her visionary experiences in The Booke, a spiritual autobiography begun in 1430. Although illiterate, she dictated the text, transforming intensely personal experiences into a remarkable work of devotional literature.

The surviving manuscript was copied shortly before 1450 by a scribe who identified himself as “Salthows”, now known to have been the Norwich monk Richard Salthouse. After the sixteenth century, Kempe’s book disappeared from view and was not rediscovered until 1934, when it was found in the private library of the Butler-Bowdon family. It is now held by the British Library. It is the first known autobiography written by a woman.

My The Light of Paradise is an hour-long work commissioned by the Zurich Chamber Singers and scored for choir and saxophone quartet. The piece as a “choral opera” with its fourteen movements, which I choose to call ‘devotions’, loosely modelled on the fourteen Stations of the Cross.

Drawing on Kempe’s words, the work traces a narrative arc that reflects both her physical pilgrimages and her inner spiritual journey. The choir is asked to mirror this journey ‘physically’ as they move around the stations of the Cross on the stage.

Neither opera nor oratorio, The Light of Paradise blends choral writing, solo voices, and instrumental interludes to create, I hope, a distinctive and immersive sound world. In a British musical tradition that has often been cautious in addressing religious ecstasy and mysticism, The Light of Paradise stands out for, I believe, in its direct engagement with visionary experience, presenting Kempe’s intense spirituality in a form that is both immediate and accessible.

I look forward immensely to returning to Edmonton to work with Michael and Pro Coro Canada and hear their great artistry bring this deeply personal work to life.

Paul Mealor, January 2026