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	Programme notes N - Z


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Programme notes N - Z

Now I have known, O Lord

For this very special commission I wanted to write a piece that reflected the particular character of the Vasari Singers - transparent, refined and meticulous, but also possessed of great fervour and virtuosity. Jeremy Backhouse proposed a text that was sacred, but not liturgical, which led me to the great Sufi mystic Al-Junaid. Couched in language that is as erotic as it is spiritual, the text seemed to demand a setting of great inwardness. The piece is largely restrained and intimate; intertwined melismatic tendrils of melody alternate with hushed homophony and self-communing murmurings, rising to a climax of fierce brightness and intensity before sinking back to the meditative calm of the opening.

Now I Have Known, O Lord was commissioned by Jeremy Backhouse and the Vasari Singers for their 25th Anniversary with funds provided by the Leche Trust and was first performed by the Vasari Singers, directed by Jeremy Backhouse, at St John's, Smith Square, London on 15 May 2005.

O Sacrum Convivium

O Sacrum Convivium was commissioned (with funds provided by South East Arts) by Andrew Millington, then organist of Guildford Cathedral, for the 1990 Guildford and Portsmouth Cathedrals Festival. Because the piece was to be sung by the combined forces of two cathedral choirs I decided to take advantage of the potentially massive resultant sonority by dividing into up to ten parts. The piece is predominantly quiet and meditative, with a refulgent climax at et futurae gloriae.

O Sacrum Convivium is dedicated to my father, a clergyman in the Guildford diocese at the time as, by a delightfully apt coincidence, it was premiered on his 60th birthday.

Rhapsody in Red

Rhapsody in Red is the second of three pieces based on works by the great British artist Richard Long.

Many of Long's works are what he calls "textworks", in which he details, very simply, walks that he has made in this country or abroad, usually by listing features of the landscape, objects he ha come across, or distances he has travelled. They are always monochromatic, words and numbers printed (always in upper case) on a white background, always in the same typeface (Gill Sans).

Rhapsody in Red derives its structure from one such work - Red Walk Bristol to Dawlish 1986. It is a list of objects seen on a walk from Bristol to Dawlish and the distances along the walk that they were seen at. (The objects are all red, and the lettering is also in red.) I have taken this sequence of distances, and by a very simple process derived from them a sequence of durations, producing one section of music for each stage of the walk. Each section is delineated by a change of key and new musical material; the tempo is constant. Thus the piece reflects both the even pace of the walk, and its variety of incident.

Rhapsody in Red was commissioned by the Tate Gallery with funds provided by the Baring Foundation and Greater London arts, and was first performed by Thalia Myers and Stephen Gutman at Tate Britain on January 2nd 1991.

Rhythm and Blues

Rhythm and Blues is in two movements. The first is mainly fast and rhythmic, with featured solos for the baritone, soprano and alto saxophones. The second, which begins with an unaccompanied monody for the baritone, is largely slow and melancholy.

Rhythm and Blues was commissioned by Andrew Gottschalk for the Delta Saxophone Quartet, who gave the first performance at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, on June 26th 1994, during the Meltdown festival.

Salve Regina

Salve Regina was written for Andrew Nethsingha and the choir of Truro Cathedral in 2000 and is dedicated to my mother on her 70th birthday. The text is, appropriately, one of the four great Marian Antiphons, and was originally appointed for use between Trinity Sunday and Advent. The piece is entirely homophonic (save for a brief soprano solo at Eia ergo) and mostly gentle and contemplative, but it does rise to a fierce climax for the final invocation O clemens, O pia, O dulcis Virgo Maria before sinking back to the calm of the opening.

Sanctum est Verum Lumen (2005)

Sanctum est Verum Lumen was commissioned by the Lichfield Festival for the Tallis quincentenary and was first performed by Ex Cathedra, directed by Jeffrey Skidmore, in Lichfield Cathedral on 14 July 2005. For me, Thomas Tallis is the greatest of all English composers and his richly varied output - the early florid Votive Antiphons, the simple 4-part Anglican anthems, the plangently expressive imitative counterpoint of later pieces like the Lamentations - have been a source of great inspiration and an influence on my own work. So it was a particular pleasure to be asked for a new 40-part companion-piece to "Spem in alium", even if, for all the excitement of the challenge it was also a slightly daunting prospect for there is much to live up to - any performance of Spem being as much a theatrical event as it is a purely musical experience.

I have divided the forty voices into the same eight 5-part choirs that Tallis used and my piece explores a variety of ways of combining those forty parts: there are massive contrapuntal tuttis for the full choir, antiphonal exchanges between different groups of singers, huge monolithic chords, an 'Über-gimeli' for the eight sopranos alone (gimel being a favourite Tudor device where the upper voices are divided to provide a section of special brilliance), individual voices emerging momentarily from the crowd, and at one point everyone briefly sings the same note (the D above middle C).

I wanted to write a piece that was essentially about light and the text, though funereal in origin, is of course radiantly optimistic and invites a variety of ways of evoking that sense of light in music - from gentle luminosity to fiercely dazzling brightness.

Sanctum est verum lumen et admirabilem ministrans lucem his qui permanserunt in agone certaminis, recipient a Christo splendorem sempiternum in quo assidue felices laetantur.

"Holy is the true light and passing wonderful, lending radiance to them that endured in the heat of the conflict; from Christ they inherit a home of unfading spelndour, wherein they rejoice with gladness evermore."

Antiphon at First Vespers, Feast of All Saints (English translation by Dr G.H. Palmer)

St Asaph Toccata

St Asaph Toccata was commissioned by Symphony Hall, Birmingham, as part of the Bach to the Future Series, and was first performed by Catherine Ennis on 9 February 2004.

The original title for the piece was Toccata Machine as I had an image of the gigantic Symphony Hall organ as some kind of mad machine uncontrollably spewing out manic toccata figuration. Excepting a short oasis of calm two-thirds of the way through the piece is very loud and has millions of notes in it.

The eventual title refers to the street in South london where I live, rather than the Welsh Saint Asaph.

Tomorrow Ye Go Forth

In 1992 Michael Nicholas, then organist of Norwich Cathedral, asked me for a setting of the Advent Vesper Responsory Tomorrow Go Ye Forth as a companion-piece to I Look from Afar (written the previous year), so that one could be sung at the beginning and the other at the end of the cathedral�s annual Advent service. Consequently Tomorrow Go Ye Forth has the same key structure as I Look from Afar and the Glorias in both pieces are identical.