THE Unthanks' new commission, The Emily Brontë Song Cycle, will be premiered live at Leeds Town Hall on December 21.

Commissioned by the Brontë Society, the songs have been written and recorded – using Emily Brontë’s piano in her Haworth home – by Unthanks' Barnsley-born composer, pianist and producer Adrian McNally and performed with Tyneside sisters Rachel and Becky Unthank.

Funded with support from Arts Council England, The Emily Brontë Song Cycle will be available on record from The Unthanks; as a unique listening experience on the moors at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, and in concert in Leeds, where You Tell Me, featuring Sarah Hayes and Field Music’s David Brewis, will be the support act.

The Unthanks have turned ten Emily Brontë poems into song, and because the Brontë family home in Haworth is now a working museum, the writing and recording had to take place after nightfall.

McNally wrote the music for the whole record during his first evening at Emily’s piano, a rare example of a five-octave cabinet piano, probably made in London between 1810 and 1815.

The days of the residency were spent working on the songs on a beautiful German upright at nearby Ponden Hall – another house associated with the Brontë family – before testing his work in progress on Emily’s instrument at the museum each evening.

Several weeks later, McNally returned to the Parsonage with Rachel and Becky to record the songs late into the night.

The Unthanks selected the Emily Brontë poems that spoke to them most, such as Shall Earth No More Inspire Thee, High Waving Heather, Lines (The Soft Unclouded Blue Of Earth) and The Night Is Darkening Round Me.

The ever-evolving folk band are synonymous with bringing historically rooted projects to life, drawing attention to subjects such as the Foundling Museum, the Children’s Employment Act of 1842 and the shipbuilding and coal-mining industries, as well as underlining the work of important artists such as Molly Drake, Robert Wyatt and Graham Miles.

The Emily Brontë Song Cycle can be experienced in three different ways, firstly The Unthanks: Lines – Part Three, Emily Bronte, on ten-inch vinyl, CD and download: a "medium-play" release available exclusively from the-unthanks.com and the Brontë Parsonage Museum shop from today (December 7) and then through general release from February 22.

The Emily Brontë Song Cycle is the third part of Lines, a trilogy of records inspired by poetry, portraying female perspectives from different points in time. The lines in Part One, Lillian Bilocca, were written by actor and writer Maxine Peake and turned into song by McNally.

The songs originally were performed live by The Unthanks in The Last Testament Of Lillian Bilocca, a site-specific theatre event at the Guildhall, written by Peake for Hull's year as UK City of Culture in 2017, recalling the Hull Triple Trawler Disaster of 1968 in which 58 men lost their lives.

The lines for Part Two, World War One, are those of First World War poems and letters, focusing on the lesser heard female voices from the time. The songs were first conceived for a live audio-visual project, A Time And A Place, in 2014 to mark the opening year of The Great War's centenary commemorations, and now The Unthanks have decided to release them in the final year.

The three records, Lillian Bilocca, World War One and Emily Brontë, can be bought as a trilogy in a neat slipcase or as individual records.

The second format is Shall Earth No More Inspire Thee - Emily Brontë Song Cycle, the aforementioned audio experience on the moors with The Unthanks, which will run at The Brontë Parsonage Museum from December 17 to March 31 next year.

Visitors can pre-book to reserve headphones, online at bronte.org.uk, to experience the song cycle while treading in Emily's footsteps through the churchyard and over the Haworth moorland.

Taking in views of Top Withins, the ruined house location that many believe to have been Emily’s inspiration for Wuthering Heights, audiences will simultaneously journey through her poems and the landscape that inspired her, accompanied by The Unthanks' music.

Tickets for the third format, the December 21 concert, are on sale at leedstownhall.co.uk.

Charles Hutchinson