De Profundis, composed by Nico Muhly with poetry by Charles Anthony Silvestri, was commissioned by The Choir of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, directed by David Skinner, during the first Covid lockdown in the spring of 2020. It was a year and a half in the making, and was conceived during the dark months of Covid lockdown in the spring of 2020 when, for the first time in long history of the English Choral Tradition, choirs fell silent.