2000 Nails
Michael Bonaventure contemporary organ works
2oo0 Nails 1. Repetitive 2. On
Michael Bonaventure
Strain
the Beach
3. Ettrick 4. Wild 5. 2000
Banks
contemporary organ works Avril Anderson (b.1953)
[7:28]
Peter Nelson (b. 1951)
[12:04]
Judith Weir (b. 1954)
[4:53]
Mossy Mountains
Judith Weir
[5:16]
Nails ••
Ian McQueen (b. 1954)
[19:57] [5:17]
6. Prelude
IV
Eddie McGuire (b. 1948)
7. Animus
VI
Michael Bonaventure (b. 1962)
[11:00]
Lyell Cresswell (b. 1944)
[13:03]
8. The
Urim and the Thummim •
total playing time
All world première recordings, except tracks 3 & 4 All works commissioned by Michael Bonaventure •• with financial assistance from the Scottish Arts Council •• with financial assistance from the PRS Foundation
[79:02]
Recorded in the McEwan Hall, University of Edinburgh on 9 & 10 September, 2004. Producer: Paul Baxter Engineer: David Strudwick Cover Image: John Christ Design: John Christ
Photography: Delphian Records © 2005 Images of the organ and photograph Editing: Raymond Parks Organ Tuned and Maintained by Forth Pipe Organs Limited
2000 Nails To many musicians, the organ inhabits a world apart, as does the musician who plays it. Solitary, intent and supremely resourceful, the organist follows in a long line of remarkable practitioners who have obeyed the peculiar laws and traditions of this world. For the most part, the player of this King of Instruments surveys this kingdom from the hermetical viewpoint of the organ loft. The organ in the concert hall seems, at first, at a great remove from all this. Yes – the recitalist is in public view – but the audience sees only the player’s back. Even where this disc was recorded, in the neo-gothic grandeur of Edinburgh University’s McEwan Hall, the audience members might feel as if they are privileged to overhear the organist’s intimate outpourings. Perhaps, even when away from its common duty of accompanying voices and playing its role amongst the unchanging liturgy, the organ is associated with musical fare that is inward and recherché. Many might well judge that the organ reached its apogee as a medium for fugal counterpoint in the hands of Bach and his contemporaries. The subsequent excesses of nineteenth century romanticism seem to have led it almost irredeemably astray, down dubious paths of mass entertainment which also brought about a parallel expansion of tonal resource and players’ technique. Up and down Britain, by the end of the century, Town Halls and Art Galleries were furnished with huge
instruments boasting carillons and percussion batteries, purveying transcriptions (to a pregramophone era audience) of everything from symphonies to opera overtures. Round the corner was municipal slavery in the cinema and the crematorium. In the twentieth century some might, again, assert that the great musicians abandoned the King. Apart from the considerable oeuvre of Frenchman Olivier Messiaen (who was an organist himself in the grande tradition) and some astonishing exceptions in the early sixties from Ligeti (‘Volumina’) and Kagel (‘Improvisation Ajoutée’), the organ has not been seen as a medium for the development of advanced techniques. The Swedish organist Karl-Erik Welin (also an actor, amongst other things) instigated many wildly innovative new pieces in the sixties and seventies, and was a figure whose work has been mirrored by Bonaventure in Scotland in the eighties and nineties. However, outwith such timely inspiration, composers have tended to forsake the organ for trendier and less vulnerable technology. Michael Bonaventure stands in the face of all this. Although he has fulfilled the role of church musician for many years, for him the Anglican Church is not the central pivot of his musical life. He is more sympathetic to the French concept of music in the church, where organ repertoire and the sung liturgy are much more distinct. His reputation rests
on his eloquent championing of uncompromising modernism. A composer himself, Michael has also commissioned or coaxed more than 50 new works out of other composers over the last 25 years. These works represent the fracture and eclecticism of style that has occurred during that time. Michael’s commissions, from many of the most notable creative artists in this country, represent true collaborations which have attempted to bend the voice of this King in directions quite new and at odds with all that is familiar. Elements of virtuosity and showmanship traditionally associated with the instrument remain, rubbing shoulders with avant garde techniques on the one hand and with overtones of church and even cinema on the other. Avril Anderson wrote Repetitive Strain for a recital Bonaventure gave in St Paul’s Cathedral in 1995. The piece proceeds through a series of textures which might sound familiar to listeners acquainted with the sequential harmonies and repeated figures of the baroque toccata repertory. The fact that these repeating patterns are associated, in this instance, with minimalism does not deny their origins. Here these means serve to create the feeling of anxiety and tension implied by the title, through the deliberate non-resolution of the strong tonal pull of the
harmony. That said, there is triumph as well as strain in the grandeur and power of the work’s conclusion. The play of a pair of trumpets over a sonorous bass pedal feels somewhat like the dismissal at the end of a church service in its power and conviction. Peter Nelson’s On The Beach, first performed in 1997, takes as its starting point the appearance on the shore of a sandy coastal strip of the gargantuan shape of a stranded whale. Most of the piece focuses on the lower registers – the pedals dance with lively African rhythms, as if recalling the whale’s thrashing tail and previous lightness in the water. There are eight sections following each other without a break, which are based on a small group of cell patterns, constantly shifting and sifting around various centres. It is as if we were viewing the gigantic shape on the shore and the play of light upon it from constantly altered perspectives. In the penultimate section, the dancing pedal notes and decisive rising and falling fanfares give way to a gentle peroration reminiscent of African wind chimes. The two short pieces by Judith Weir were written for recitals given by Bonaventure in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe during the mid 1980s. They have since entered the repertory and have been recorded by several organists throughout the world. This is
2000 Nails testimony to the growth of Weir’s reputation; she is now one of the most successful composers of her generation. Ettrick Banks first appeared in 1985. It’s a bubbling, plashing, sometimes roaring sequence of water-based musical images, linked and structured through falls or pools of varied harmony. The second piece, Wild Mossy Mountains is earlier, dating from 1982. It could be characterised as a series of short, strenuous climbs and descents with many rewarding vistas to view en route. A masterly harmonic instinct, not dissimilar to that in Anderson’s Repetitive Strain, is evident. This harmonic thread guides the listener through a highly-contrasted sequence of characteristic organ textures culminating in the sheer cliff of a C major common chord (in altered first inversion). Ian McQueen’s 2000 NAILS was commissioned by Bonaventure in 2003 and was premièred in a recital he gave on the instrument on which this disc was recorded. The vast space of the McEwan Hall of Edinburgh University seemed to me (the composer) to call for slow measured speech such as that of church plainsong and for music aspiring to ‘public’ rather than ‘private’ statements. Ultimately, the music was to embrace both these characters.
The Passiontide Sequence Victimae Paschali Laudes, with its subject of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, was associated in my mind before I began composing, with Edith Sitwell’s great poem of the Second World War: ‘Still Falls the Rain (The Raids, 1940, Night and Dawn)’1. Following the music’s initial hammer blows, and sections that develop the opening phrases of the Plainsong Sequence – harmonising them in the cinema or crematorium styles previously alluded to – an instrumental setting of Sitwell’s words ushers in a more intimate world, principally concerned with the sounds of nineteenth century French organ music. ‘Still falls the rain’, writes Sitwell, ‘Dark as the world of man. Black as our loss –’ This sequence of bleak images is set in a gentle, imitative, quasi-choral style. Thereafter I have changed the poem’s crucial line: ‘Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails upon the cross’ (1940 being the year of the poem’s writing), to ‘– two thousand nails’ as the millennium had been reached at the time of composition. ‘– O, Ile leape (up) to my God: who pulls me doune – ? –’ Sitwell continues, ‘See! See where Christ’s blood streames in the firmament! It flows from the Brow we nailed (up)on the tree.’ 1 From ‘Still Falls the Rain’, reprinted by permission from the publishers, Sinclair – Stevenson
All these lines are married with a particular musical image. There then follows an ethereal scherzo and a diabolical march, again relating to nineteenth century French models. A gentle linking passage, based on the musical phrase associated with ‘Still falls the rain’, leads to the first part of the concluding passacaglia. The bass insistently repeats a falling four-note figure associated with the musical image for ‘– upon the cross’. Above this, variants of some of the other phrases with which Sitwell’s text is associated appear, until, all at once, the music veers into another French-style scherzo – zipping along in a sixeight hiccupping rhythm. The passacaglia finally resumes its course and the work ends, after recalling some of its opening moments, with a great crescendo on full organ. Edward McGuire’s series of Preludes have spanned the course of his whole career. Prelude IV is nearly twenty-five years old, and was one of the earliest of the works commissioned by Bonaventure from his neargeneration of Scottish composers. As is the case with many of the Preludes, the piece reveals the lighter side of McGuire. Joy and exuberance define its mood. Delicate and filigreed, it starts with one reiterated note which dances and accrues fellows. These parents create gritty aggregates, spiky clusters of notes and sinuous lines.
The Prelude’s climax juxtaposes lower voices, where the opening patterns coalesce into chords, with free rising and falling patterns of clusters which form a scale-like background. Then, finally, we are left with that reiterated note again at the end, disappearing into silence. It formed a retirement presentation, in 1980, to Frederick Rimmer, long-serving Professor of Music at Glasgow University. Michael Bonaventure’s Animus VI is probably the purest piece of music on this disc, in terms of the boldness and simplicity of its material. The ‘hostile force or entity’, which is how Bonaventure conceives this ‘animus’, is embodied in the extraordinary sound of baleful trumpets which opens the piece. He first heard this unique timbre amongst the enormous kaleidoscope of colours he discovered at the console of the organ of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris during his recitals there. The work characteristically arises from Bonaventure’s preoccupation with typicallyFrench, sumptuous, contrasts of colour. The opening harmonic sequence, which recurs many times, uses a characteristic separate colouration for each chord. Drones are employed to create a sense of time suspended, or even halted, to an eternal continuum. This last effect is particularly evident in the long sustained passage at the
2000 Nails
The organist
end, when a deep cluster in the bass answers bright chirrups from high above.
Michael Bonaventure, born in 1962 in Edinburgh, was a pupil of Herrick Bunney at St Giles Cathedral. For many years he was Organist of St Peter’s, Lutton Place, Edinburgh, where he gave numerous recitals during the years 1997–2003. Since March 2003 he has been based in London, working as a freelance musician and Organist of All Saints, Blackheath.
Lyell Cresswell’s The Urim And The Thummim is another elemental and extraordinary work. It uses the organ like a fist that wields a great hammer of sound, whose pounding releases massive chords of tremendous power at the end of each short paragraph of the opening and concluding sections. The texture is placed mostly in the lower and middle registers, but later thins to long lines high above, before returning to the thunderous song of the opening. The Biblical image of the title, evoking the devices – such as casting dice – used in divination by the priests of Solomon’s Temple, seems to call forth the wrath of an implacable Old Testament God. Is this the unrelenting, glorious voice of the tuba mirum on Judgement Day? © Ian McQueen 2004
Numerous composers have written for this indefatigable exponent of new music. In addition to the composers represented on this disc, they include Ornette D. Clennon, Geoffrey King, James MacMillan, Jean-Pierre Leguay, and James Douglas. Michael has broadcast programmes of contemporary music on BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio Scotland, and on Swedish Radio. He has given recitals throughout the UK – playing regularly at all of London’s Cathedrals and major City Churches – in Sweden, in the USA (with financial subsidy from the Scottish Arts Council) and throughout France; particularly notable were two recitals at NotreDame Cathedral, Paris, given at the invitation of Jean-Pierre Leguay. From 1980–1997 he appeared regularly at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, playing new works for organ,
The composers and was twice presented in recital by ECAT – this included a critically acclaimed performance of Messiaen’s ‘Livre d’Orgue’ in 1994, and the world première of JeanPierre Leguay’s ‘Horizon’ in 1996. Thanks are due to John Kitchen and the Scottish Music Centre. Thanks also to David Page for page turning.
Avril Anderson was born in Hampshire in 1953 and studied with Humphrey Searle and John Lambert at the Royal College of music where she was awarded the Cobbett Prize. She subsequently studied at the New England Conservatory, Boston, USA and privately with David del Tredici in New York. Avril’s music has been performed and broadcast by leading performers in Europe, the USA and Australia. She has written works for the concert hall (orchestral and chamber), opera, scores for dance and music for education. She is also co-artistic director of the contemporary music ensemble, Sounds Positive, founded in 1987. Peter Nelson was born in Glasgow, and studied English Literature and Music at Glasgow University, followed by further study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is currently Head of Music at the University of Edinburgh. Through the 1980s he worked closely with the composer, Iannis Xenakis and his UPIC computer music system, composing
The composers a number of works for the UPIC and touring extensively with les Ateliers UPIC. He also founded, with Geoffrey King and Diana Milne, Edinburgh Contemporary Arts Trust (ECAT), which presents a regular season of new music concerts in Edinburgh. Since 1984 he has edited the international journal, Contemporary Music Review (Routledge). Recent compositions include a concerto for cello and electric cello written for FrancesMarie Uitti and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and a song cycle, Merzmusic, on texts by Kurt Schwitters for the Edinburgh International Festival. www.scottishmusiccentre.com/peter_nelson/ Photograph: Simon Saffery Judith Weir is one of Britain’s most wide-ranging composers. She studied composition with John Tavener whilst at school in London, and at Cambridge University with Robin Holloway. For six years she taught composition at Glasgow’s University and RSAMD and she has also held visiting professorships at Oxford and Princeton. Her interest in theatre, narrative and folklore has resulted in three full length operas, ‘A Night at the Chinese Opera’, ‘The Vanishing
Bridegroom’ and ‘Blond Eckbert’; and theatrical collaborations with Sir Peter Hall, Caryl Churchill and Peter Shaffer. Together with storyteller Vayu Naidu, Judith has created a blend of storytelling and music entitled ‘Future Perfect’ which has toured England and India. A new instalment is planned for 2005. From 1995 to 1998 she was the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s Composer in Association; and from 1995 to 2000 she was the Artistic Director of the Spitalfields Festival in London. She spent the first half of 2004 teaching at Harvard University, as the Fromm Foundation Visiting Professor of Music. Judith Weir’s music is published exclusively by Chester Music Ltd. and Novello and Co. Ltd. www.chesternovello.com/composer/ 1729/main.html After studies at the Royal College of Music with John Lambert, at Dartington Summer School with Peter Maxwell Davies and at London University where he graduated in 1975, Ian McQueen completed his studies when he became the 1976 Mendelssohn Scholar, studying for a year in Denmark with Per Nørgård.
He made his professional debut with Eighteenth Century Scottish Dances at the 1976 Edinburgh Festival. This work was commissioned by Maxwell Davies, who conducted the première with his ensemble the Fires of London. Ian is one of Britain’s foremost opera composers, having written eight full-length stage works to date, plus a new chamber arrangement of Gounod’s ‘Faust’. He has undertaken residencies and projects for London’s Centre for Young Musicians, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, The London Sinfonietta, and the Operahögskolan of Gothenburg University in Sweden, among many others. Ian has been active in the British Academy of Composers and Songwriters (BACS) since it was founded in 1999. He has also served on the Council of the SPNM and is on the Board of BACS, which is now firmly established as the membership organization for all British composers. www.ian-mcqueen.co.uk/ Eddie McGuire was born in Glasgow and studied composition with James Iliff at the Royal Academy of Music, London (1966–70) and then with the Swedish composer Ingvar Lidholm in Stockholm. His works are
regularly broadcast and commissions have come from the Glasgow University McEwen Bequest, the New Music Group of Scotland, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the St Magnus Festival, and the Edinburgh International Festival. In recent years he has produced several largescale works to critical acclaim: the ballet score Peter Pan, A Glasgow Symphony, a chamber opera The Loving of Etain, and concerti for guitar, trombone, viola, violin and (most recently) double bass. McGuire also plays flute with, and writes for, the Scottish folk group The Whistlebinkies. He was a recipient of a British Composers Award 2003 and a Creative Scotland Award 2004. www.scottishmusiccentre.com/ edward_mcguire/ Photograph: Piero Casadei Lyell Cresswell was born in New Zealand and has studied at the Universities of Wellington, Toronto, Aberdeen and Utrecht. Following a spell as a music administrator in Wales he returned to Scotland to hold composition fellowships at the universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. He is now a freelance composer based
The composers
Organ in the McEwan Hall …
… University of Edinburgh
in Edinburgh. His music is widely performed and broadcast – in Australia, New Zealand and the Far East as well as in Europe.
Robert Hope-Jones, 1897; Henry Willis, 1953; Rushworth and Dreaper, 1980.
Great Violon Bourdon Open diapason no.1 Open diapason no.2 Open diapason no.3 Stopped diapason Octave diapason Principal Stopped flute Twelfth Fifteenth Cymbal Mixture Contra tromba Tromba Clarion
In 2001 he received a Scottish Arts Council Creative Scotland Award to create a music theatre work in collaboration with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, involving issues of exile and identity. In 2002 he received an honorary D.Mus from Victoria University of Wellington, and was awarded the inaugural Elgar Bursary. He is one of the artistic directors of ECAT. www.scottishmusiccentre.com/lyell_cresswell
The organ in the McEwan Hall, which is the University’s graduation hall, has had a chequered career. It was originally built in 1897 by Robert Hope-Jones, and distributed in various parts of the building since no space had been left for an organ when the hall was designed. Hope-Jones’s recently-invented electric action united the organ’s disparate sections, which were originally played from a console in the gallery. A major rebuilding and redesigning project was undertaken by Willis in 1953 in consultation with Herrick Bunney; at that time a movable detached console on the floor of the hall was installed. In 1980 Rushworth and Dreaper renewed the action, and in recent years further tonal changes have been made. The organ suffers to some extent from its scattered and eccentric layout, yet it can sound impressive in the majestic space of the remarkable hall, which was planned by Sir Rowand Anderson to a design inspired by the form of the ancient Greek theatre, and which also incorporates many ideas from early Italian Renaissance architecture. The hall is very reverberant, having a reverberation period, when empty, of just over six seconds.
16 16 8 8 8 8 4 4 4 2 2/ 3 2 III 16 8 4
Choir Lieblich gedackt Principal Nason flute Nazard Flautino Tierce Larigot
8 4 4 2 2/ 3 2 1 3/ 5 1 1/ 3
Pedal Subbass (derived) 32 Open bass (wood) 16 Contra bass (metal) 16 Violon (great) 16 Bourdon (great) 16 Viola (swell) 16 Octave bass (ext.) 8 Viol 8 Flute (gt. bourdon) 8 Fifteenth (ext.) 4 Octave flute (gt. bourdon) 4 Mixture III Hope-Jones diaphones: – Contra posaune 32 – Posaune (ext.) 16 Contra tromba (gt.) 16 Waldhorn (swell) 16 Cor anglais (solo) 16 Tuba (solo) 8
Swell Contra viola Geigen diapason Rohr flute Viola da gamba Voix celestes (TC) Fugara Octave viola Harmonic flute Flageolet Cornet mixture Chorus mixture Vox humana Oboe Waldhorn Trumpet Clarion
16 8 8 8 8 4 4 4 2 III V 8 8 16 8 4
Solo Violoncello Rohr flute Orchestral flute Cor anglais Corno di bassetto Tuba
8 8 4 16 8 8
Compass: manuals C-c’’’’ 61 notes; pedal CC-G 32 notes Full complement of couplers and other accessories Tremulants to swell, choir and solo organs Eight general pistons; usual departmental pistons
New Music on Delphian Ascension Choir of St Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh; Matthew Owens World première recording DCD34017
Kenneth Leighton: Complete Piano Works (3 Discs) Angela Brownridge World première recording DCD34301
Messiaen’s meditative organ work L’Ascension is a highlight on this recording from St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, Edinburgh; Matthew Owens performs on the ‘Father’ Willis organ. Featuring choral works from James MacMillan, Kenneth Leighton, and Richard Allain.
The complete solo piano works of Kenneth Leighton (1929 – 1988) are presented here for the first time on three discs, containing many première recordings. Written for Leighton’s own instrument, and played here by his distinguished pupil Angela Brownridge, the varied nature of this programme spans Leighton’s entire career as a composer.
‘A shining service of contemporary works... The choir sing with tremendous fervour, clarity, and power’ – Gramophone
MacMillan Complete Piano Works/MacRae Piano Sonata Simon Smith, piano World première recording DCD34009
The Peoples Mass Dunedin Consort World première recording DCD34018
Simon Smith’s astounding debut recording features a kaleidoscope of piano works by Scottish composers James MacMillan and Stuart MacRae. Smith’s fluency in these contemporary pieces is exuberant and definitive, from subtle murmur to virtuosic flourish.
Six contemporary Scottish-based composers come together in this new Mass setting performed by the Dunedin Consort. Polychoral pieces interweave with harp-accompanied songs in a spiritual work that achieves unity in diversity, designed to stimulate and inspire the listener’s inner soul.
‘Smith is an outstanding player with a huge expressive range: both composers are fortunate indeed to have such an advocate.’ – International Record Review
Delphian Records is one of the UK’s fastest-growing independent labels and is lauded for its recordings of contemporary and early music alike. Please visit www.delphianrecords.co.uk.
DCD34013
