Nearly forty years ago Teresa Keswick exchanged her career as a London lawyer for life as a nun in an enclosed and largely silent Carmelite monastery in Norfolk. She’s devoted her life to prayer and work and has become a highly skilled embroiderer. Since 2014 she’s written a regular column for The Oldie magazine.
In a special ‘Private Passions’ programme for Easter Day, Sister Teresa shared her fascinating life story and the music she loves with presenter Michael Berkeley.
Sr Teresa told Michael about her initial reluctance to accept her vocation and leave her busy social life in London for a remote monastery in the Norfolk countryside and the contentment she eventually found in the strict daily routine of prayer and work.
She chose pieces by Handel and by Beethoven that reflect her life before she became a nun and two pieces of plainchant that play a central role in the life of her community - and described her ongoing love of 1960s pop music and there’s a song by Simon and Garfunkel which she still plays when she has a day off from work, once a month. And she appreciates the importance of having fun – in life and in music – choosing the party scene from the opening of La Traviata, which recalls a wonderful evening at the opera when she lived in London.
Sr Teresa described how her community celebrates Easter Day and chooses music from Bach’s Mass in B Minor; she says this music is the only thing that comes close to describing Christ’s resurrection.
A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3
To listen: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000tw5j
TRACKLIST:
1 : Plainchant:
Salve Mater Misericordiae
2 : Ludwig van Beethoven
Bagatelle in A minor - Fur Elise
3 : George Frideric Handel
Dead March (Saul)
4: Clement Jacob
Au milieu de silence (Psalm 18)
5: Simon & Garfunkel
The Sound of Silence
6: Giuseppe Verdi
Libiamo (Traviata, Act 1)
7: Johann Strauss II
Blue Danube - Waltz
8: Johann Sebastian Bach
Et Resurrexit (Mass in B minor)