In 1957, the Mexican Nobel Prize-winning author Octavio Paz published his epic poem Piedra del sol (Sun Stone) — Reflections on Eternity and Transience. Much like the round Aztec stone calendar, the poem is structured in a cyclical form.

The English composer Joby Talbot selected key passages from the text as the basis for his no less epic choral composition from 2026 and also adhered structurally to Paz’s original. The beginning and end are also musically connected.

With its stylistic and vocal sophistication, Conspirare brings a sense of tension, intensity, and emotional depth to Talbot’s effort to capture in sound the fundamental idea of flow and dissolution, of timelessness and finitude.