Distractions, distractions. The nasty hum from the nave roof's electric lights. The cathedral's eight o'clock bells. Holy but distancing acoustics. Yet, time and again, words and music cut through the tapestry to grasp ears and hearts - something that always happens when the composer Alec Roth collaborates with the writer Vikram Seth.

The team is currently progressing through four pieces bouncing off different cultures, each commissioned and showcased by three summer arts festivals - Salisbury, Lichfield, and Chelsea. Chinese and European cultures have already been ticked; this third piece, The Traveller, concentrates on India's literature, languages and beliefs. Fifty-five minutes long, the new work left me with no hope of catching the early train back, and certainly no desire. In any case, I was already travelling through the Ages of Man from womb to death, in the company of the tenor Mark Padmore (fiercely eloquent), the violinist Philippe Honoré, two choirs (adult and children), and the Britten Sinfonia's strings and percussion. And, always, Seth's web of words, vivid and tender: some original, others grafted and translated from Indian texts stretching back to the Rig Veda.

A gamelan expert, Roth never needs any nudging to give his music Eastern inflections, and his sinuous, singable lines formed a welcoming, pliant marriage with the libretto's plangent, often earthy, poetry. As violin, drum and the Salisbury Festival Chorus processed toward the platform with Seth's first poem, Unborn, we seemed to be hearing music that always existed. Roth may not match Britten's individuality as a vocal composer, but, like Jonathan Dove, he shares the master's gift for communication, for making composing a public art.

True, the acoustics sometimes played devil's advocate, even if you were sitting close, and even with Roth's vigorous conducting. Handed syncopated rhythms, the Festival Choir, usually boisterous, tended towards the tentative - dangerous when the sound had to leap across the robust Britten Sinfonia. But nothing could stop Padmore's declamatory solos piercing the air, each word coloured as carefully and feelingly as they had been earlier in Finzi's Dies Natalis, another musical journey through life. And if words clouded over with the Salisbury Area Young Musicians' Junior Choir, nothing could blur the thrill of youngsters enjoying singing.

The one lasting disappointment was Honoré's violin - cast in Roth's sheme as the Traveller himself but given relatively little to do. Not the case with Ysaye's second Violin Sonata, earlier dispatched with fire and pluck against the worst of the electric hum. The Traveller travels next to the Chelsea (June 18) and Lichfield Festivals (July 8); do try to catch it.

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