‘A problematic past’: How my new piece commemorates Amazing Grace

How do you commemorate something without celebrating it?

It’s a question I found myself asking when faced with a recent commission, a request for a composition to mark the 250th anniversary of the sermon that became known as Amazing Grace. On the face of it, the task looked fairly simple; I was being invited to write a choral piece for a concert that would be the summation of a year-long round of events, lectures, displays and discussions, with one of the world’s most iconic hymns at its centre.

Two major concerns were raised from the outset, however. The first was about the problematic past of the man who penned the sermon that became Amazing Grace. That man was . Born in Wapping in 1725, Newton went to sea aged 11 and, after an ignominious career in the Royal Navy, transferred to working in the slave trade, captaining slave ships and investing in further operations once a stroke caused him to retire from the sea. did not initially dampen his enthusiasm for the slave trade but after joining the clergy he served at , and in the later years of his life he became an active abolitionist. He lived long enough to see the Slave Trade Act pass through parliament in 1807, the year of his death.