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Contents:
DDD 53.42 Recorded in Norwich Cathedral, 10–12 July 2001 by kind permission of The Dean and Chapter St Peter and St Paul - for choir and organ I wrote St Peter and St Paul for choir and organ as a commission for the Norwich Festival of Contemporary Church Music in 1997. It was during the Evensong for the Feast of St Peter and St Paul that Norwich Cathedral Choir, conducted by David Dunnett with Neil Taylor, organ, gave its première. The text has two sources: The beginning and the end of the piece are based on the office hymn text of the Anglican Evensong liturgy. In between are texts taken from the New Testament (St .Luke and Acts of the Apostles), which show the two saints in their human weakness: Peter who denied Jesus and Paul who raged against the first Christians. Three Carols - for choir and organ The Three Carols were initiated in 1996 by my friend Stephen Jackson (conductor of the BBC Symphony Chorus) for a Carol concert by the Wooburn Singers, to whom they are also dedicated. They were originally written for brass quintet and choir. I picked three texts out of the enormous choice of traditional Carols which could form three parts: Andante – Adagio – Presto. O taste and see - for choir and organ My colleague as organist and former choirmaster in Oberägeri, Hanspeter Isler, received this short commissioned piece for his birthday in March 2001 from his son and daughter. The text is the words which the priest in the Roman Catholic liturgy uses to invite the congregation to receive holy communion. A Blessing - for choir and organ The prophecy by Isaiah that God will make everything new, he will pour water into the desert, and he will pour his Spirit on future generations, is the text and musical content of this short piece for choir and organ, which I dedicated to my friend Chris Duarte in 2000 Feuerzungen (Tongues of fire) - for organ solo The organ piece Feuerzungen was written in June 1998. It was commissioned by the choir of St Michael’s Church, Zug, as a leaving present for their long-serving music director, Paul Rohner. The work is based on the Whitsun plainchant Veni Sancte Spiritus. The first verses start wild and blowing, stormy and firelike. Small sections of the plainchant float around. All of a sudden the storm ceases and in this silence the call of a dove rings out (the dove as the universal symbol for the Holy Spirit). In the background the plainchant continues very softly with the verse O lux beatissima (“O most happy light”). This mysterious and atmospheric moment is interrupted by the joyful voice of a blackbird at close quarters (the blackbird’s song is my personal symbol for the Holy Spirit). The blackbird’s song gradually becomes a complete theme into which the first theme of the plainchant is woven The girl or Ecce Ancilla Domini - for organ solo My very first organ composition (1975) was planned to become a trilogy about the Annunciation: 1.The angel 2.The girl 3.The Holy Spirit As I wasn’t ready to compose the last of these three movements at this time (it was composed in1981 as the Veni Creator Spiritus for organ), I usually played each movement as an independent piece rather than a suite. The girl, dedicated to my wife Marie-Louise, starts shy and timid but then grows into a hymn of praise, a kind of Magnificat. This trio-like piece is built on only one note, the note E. Salve Regina - for upper voices and organ I wrote my very first work for choir and organ in 1981. This was the Salve Regina for upper-voices and organ and was the first time I used the call of a wild pigeon as a musical motif, a device I have used several times in later works (Nunc dimittis, Sermon on the mount, etc.). In this early composition I mostly treated the choir and organ as two independent instruments; the choir, therefore, has large a cappella sections to sing. The Windmill Sail - from the organ suite Jacob’s ladder The Luzerner Orgelbuch, a collection of unpublished organ pieces written by Baroque composers from central Switzerland, was edited in 2001. In addition to this collection some contemporary composers wrote new organ pieces based on themes from the baroque organ music. The Windmill Sail is the last of five movements. The central idea of this piece is an interpretation of Jacob’s ladder by Silja Walter. She sees the ladder as a windmill sail which is caused to turn round constantly by rising and falling angels and by the fact that the ladder is fixed nowhere, neither on the earth nor in the sky (from Silja Walter: “Der Ruf aus dem Garten”, Paulusverlag, Freiburg 1995). In the last section of the movement I also used an original peasant’s yodel from Muotathal (Switzerland). Sermon on the mount - after the gospels of St Matthew and St Luke
My
composition Sermon on the mount is based on the original Sermon on the
mount by Jesus as we read it in the gospel of St Matthew and St Luke. I wrote it
in 1995 especially for Victor Kaufmann and his “Baarer Vokalensemble”. Page revises 26.06.03 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
