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.

Hodie Christus Natus Est is a homage to that particularly ‘rustic’ element in early medieval church music, where elements of the pre-Christian and Christian rites seemed to coexist in a beguiling symbiosis. The work aims to blend a folksy, communal dance element with more traditional choral writing. It is a light-hearted piece, and the score could be used as a blueprint to a more extreme version of what is composed where the ‘pagan’ aspects of the work could be exaggerated to great effect.

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’.

Canticum Mariae Virginis juxtaposes two texts, both regarding the Virgin Mary, but offering different yet complementary accounts of the Blessed Virgin. As well as pairing these texts, the piece also uses two different languages and two points of view in its six-minute duration.

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.

Regina Coeli is a simple and sustained setting of the well-known Marian Antiphon. It carries on a current desire to write shorter, easier motets that are more accessible to a wider range of choirs.

Alma Redemptoris Mater is a simple and sustained setting of the well-known Marian Antiphon. It carries on a current desire to write shorter, easier motets that are more accessible to a wider range of choirs.

To the End of the Age is a simple setting of this short section from the Book of Matthew relating to the Baptism of Christ. It carries on a current desire to write shorter, easier motets that are more accessible to a wider range of choirs, though still retaining the thumbprints of my mature style.

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