for ATTBB solo voices unaccompanied Skempton's setting of the text from the Book of Revelation is reflective rather than ferocious, and trusts in the power of understatement. A commissioned setting by Howard Skempton of the text And there was war in Heaven was constantly imaginative. It embraced shifting drones, uneasy interplay of semitone and tones, slurs almost like quartertones, and at one stage what sounded like Skemptons own pared-down version of Arvo Pärt's rocking tintinnabuli technique.