Dialogue takes the ‘Sanctus’ of my 2017 work Missa Sancti Albanus as the source for a spirited exploration of the material and its possibilities on the organ. It largely follows the shape of the original but expands on each section aiming to realise the inherent potential of the music therein. The main deviation is at the end of the work, where the affirming ending of the Sanctus is replaced with a quiet dissipation of the dialogue between voices and musical material.

The Two Recessionals continue the exploration of plainchant in my recent work. The first is a short work based on the St Edmund Antiphon and was written for the Patronal Festival at St Edmundsbury Cathedral. It is in a firm ABA form and progressively builds to a huge climax. The second is a little more subdued and takes the plainchant O lux beata Trinitas as its source material. Again, it exhibits a strong ABA form, but here the B material is taken from my own choral setting of the O lux beata Trinitas text (from 2013) and provides a sonic contrast to the prevailing music.

Three Meditations takes three diverse plainchant themes and recolours them in my own harmonic language, each seeking to bring out different aspects of these beautiful, transcendent pieces of music. The suite works as a broad ABA, with the outer meditations being more thoughtful and discursive and the middle piece being a more concise exploration of one phrase from ‘Christus Vincit’.

Bennachie is a suite for piano taking inspiration from the eponymous hill that is so prominent in the relatively flat, fertile lands of east Aberdeenshire. The hill is prominent, not just in topographical terms, but also that it has such a rich and established cultural and historical legacy that embraces myth, legend and real, visceral events that have shaped the land and the people that live in its lee. Bennachie was commissioned by the Bailies of Bennachie (a charity that not only seeks to preserve the natural environs of the hill, but also to encourage interest in its cultural and historical past) for their 50th anniversary to engender further interest in the hill and to contribute to the existing artistic legacy associated with it.

PAC

The Impromptus are simple pieces designed as breaks from larger compositional projects for the piano. They are an ongoing set, working with simple melodic ideas in different guises. Additionally, all three pieces explore in a rudimentary fashion the relationship between differnt pitches - in Three Sad Dances it is G and G# in Three Wistful Tunes it is C and F.

PAC

The Theme and Transfigurations is the final piece in my project of ‘transfigurations’ for the piano which have occupied me creatively for the majority of 2021-22. Whereas previous works have sought to transfigure folksongs, national anthems, popular songs and opera arias (amongst other things), this piece takes a short piece of my own from 2013 and transfigures different motifs, patterns, melodies and themes over five short movements.

PAC

National Anthems carries on my current preoccupation with the transfiguration of material from one state of being to something different, perhaps more spiritual and beautiful than the original. These four pieces are perhaps the most strict and direct of the transfigurations that I have undertaken in the past year or two and are thus the most distilled examples of the technique.

Transfiguration takes a selection of ‘themes’ (some of which are as simple as a chord or a gesture, some of which are more apparent) from Gustav Holst’s 1927 masterpiece Egdon Heath and seeks to transfigure or transform them to a new medium and mode of being in keeping with much of my current work. Egdon Heath has long been a work I have been heavily influenced by and my piece is both a homage and an extension of some of the moods and colours of Holst’s original.

The Songs of Morning and Night carry on my current preoccupation with the transfiguration of material from one state of being to something different, perhaps more spiritual and beautiful than the original. These short pieces transfigure snippets of existing, well-known pieces into something more reflective, resonant and timeless (though not without some humour and pithiness). The six transfigured pieces are split into three aubades (‘songs of the morning’) and three nocturnes (‘songs of the night’) and transfigure folksongs, popular songs, a lied and an opera aria.

Fantasia is my longest single-movement organ work to date and forms part of a current preoccupation with transforming or transfiguring previous musical materials into something of a more beautiful or spiritual state. In this case, the Fantasia is a transfiguration of a motet of mine Veni Sancte Spiritus (‘Come Holy Ghost’) that I finished in 2012 but had begun much earlier in c.2004.

Folksongs are simple ‘re-imaginings’ of well-known English folksongs that have long since left their natural surroundings to become cultural artefacts in their own right. Another word for the compositional process might be ‘deconstruction’ as each folksong is reduced to a handful of key features, such as a melodic fragment, a cadence or a rhythmic gesture and pieced together in a different fashion.

Two Hymn Tune Preludes were written for the Oxford University Press anthology Oxford Hymn Settings for Organists: Holy Communion and are new arrangements of exisiting well-known hymn tunes.

Epitaph is based around simple harmonic devices and fragments that are varied throughout. The work is significantly coloured by the minor ninth harmony which is present in all the key moments of the piece.

In modo elegiaco are three simple studies in sustained, elegiac organ writing. All are homophonic, slow and chordal and are studies in a particular sonority rather than a designated set or suite.

PAC

Secret Ceremonials is essentially a set of theme and variations, but rather than varying a given melody, here different textures, fragments and motifs are taken apart and put back together in a variety of different ways.