Mirror of Perfection was commissioned by the Royal Ballet School and first performed at the Royal College of Music in March 1996. Ronald Corp immediately recognised it as a work that could become standard choral repertory and conducted a performance shortly afterwards at the Royal Festival Hall with the London Choral Society and the New London Orchestra. The work’s success came to the attention of Sony Classical who subsequently recorded it with the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus and Bournemouth Sinfonietta, with soloists Ying Huang and Bo Skovhus. The Sony recording was featured in its entirety in the BBC2 film Seven Canticles of St. Francis, narrated by Jeremy Irons, shown on Easter Sunday 1999. The Bournemouth Symphony Chorus have since performed Mirror of Perfection on their tour of Israel, their Italian tour in 2000 and the Sheldocian Theatre in Oxford. See Forthcoming Events for performances in 2001.

Richard Blackford writes: "The words are settings of almost unknown poems by St Francis of Assisi and cover a wide expressive and emotional range: from hope to despair, longing to acceptance, love to bitterness, delight in Creation to an impassioned plea for peace amongst mankind. The cantata is no pious word-setting of an ancient saint – rather it is a passionate and vibrant evocation of a man who remains a symbol of hope in an age of spiritual emptiness and cultural decline. Francis of Assisi remains for me a beacon of spiritual light in our technological, ego-based, twentieth century and suggests that perhaps it is through poetry, music and the celebration of life in all its beauty and horror that we can find redemption as we face the new millennium".