A new choral work inspired by the Sycamore Gap tree is being performed for the first time today by the Helsinki Chamber Choir in Finland. The piece, titled ‘The World Tree’, was written by Professor Robert Macfarlane, who teaches Literature and the Environmental Humanities at the University of Cambridge and is a Fellow of Emmanuel College.
The Sycamore Gap tree was a well-known 120-year-old sycamore that stood near Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland, England. Its illegal felling in 2023 led to widespread attention and condemnation.
“It was in many ways an axis mundi, a ‘world tree’,” said Macfarlane. “Although it was a single tree growing where there should really be a forest, it nevertheless became a focus for many of our complex, passionate, contradictory feelings about trees, forests and the living world more broadly.”
Macfarlane explained his decision to broaden the scope of his work: “I decided that, instead of just writing a series of contemporary requiems … I wanted to widen the whole frame of the work and take a much longer view of tree-human relations in England and beyond.”
He added: “In the libretto I pull the temporal lens right back to the re-emergence of trees and forests in northern Europe towards the end of the Pleistocene.” The first movement is called ‘Glacial Maximum’.
“I am interested as much in the longue durée of human-forest relations as in the acute event of the Sycamore Gap Tree’s felling, and the outpouring of love, grief and anger which followed,” Macfarlane said.
Matthew Whittall, a Finnish-Canadian composer, set Macfarlane’s libretto to music. The premiere will be conducted by Nils Schweckendiek, who graduated from Clare College at Cambridge.
The final movement is titled ‘The Word for World Is Forest’, imagining future woodlands flourishing where only one tree once stood. Other movements include titles such as ‘Wildwood’, ‘Song of the Axe’ and ‘Pollen: a Polyphony’.
Reflecting on two men convicted for felling the Sycamore Gap Tree earlier this year, Macfarlane commented: “The historical-psychological echoes and rhymes of this event are many. The intersection of ecocide and toxic masculinity is nothing new.”
He continued: “I thought immediately of the first story of mindless tree-felling by two glory-seeking males: the account in the Epic of Gilgamesh (a text c. 4400 years old in its Sumerian form), of how Gilgamesh and Enkidu travelled to the Sacred Cedar Wood, slew its guardian spirit Humbaba, felled the tallest cedar in the forest and took its lumber — and Humbaba’s head — back to Uruk as trophies.”
Macfarlane has published several award-winning books adapted into various media formats. His works include Is a River Alive? (2025), Underland (2019), Landmarks (2015), The Old Ways (2012) and The Wild Places (2007). He has also contributed lyrics for songs with musicians such as Cosmo Sheldrake, Karine Polwart and Johnny Flynn; collaborated on albums including Lost In The Cedar Wood (2021) and The Moon Also Rises (2023); co-adapted Susan Cooper's novel The Dark Is Rising into a BBC audio drama; and written for film projects narrated by Willem Dafoe.
‘The World Tree’ premieres at Helsinki’s Temppeliaukio Church on November 18th with further performances scheduled that week across Kotka, Nurmijärvi, and Vihti.