This is a live recording of my latest work for Organ and Electronics: Beneath the Darkening Sea.
It premiered in Aberdeen during the 2015 Sound Festival in November and features Roger B Williams on organ and myself on live electronics.
The recording was made using a handheld device during the live performance and is fairly rough in quality but hopefully the work will be properly recorded in early 2016 for a later release.
If so, it will sound similar to this and yet different as the score consists of a series choices made by the organist that lead to different results each time the work is performed.
Although the piece is fairly static, it’s an extremely difficult work to perform because of the numerous notes held throughout the work. Not only is the organist asked to sustain several notes during the piece, but also to add and subtract notes while holding others. As a result the hands can become stretched to full capacity between thumb and pinky while still having to carefully add and subtract new notes from within the full stretch of each hand. I found that I could only play through the piece twice without having to take significant breaks.
Here are some early drafts of the work (using the prime number system that I use for my Gates pieces):
With this in mind, I created a set of weights in case performing the work proved too difficult within the course of a long concert. I’m fairly certain this wasn’t needed by Roger, however, and shows the difference between a composer performing his own organ piece and a professional organist performing it.
In addition to organ, there is an improvised live electronics part consisting of sine tones combined with three different types of noise (white, pink and brown). The electronics part is not notated and as I was the one performing it, but basically the electronics are used to ‘nudge’ the organ part towards different places of consonance and dissonance, while the noise is added at various points when I felt that it was appropriate.
The electronics were performed using very simple software that I created for the premiere.
As I said, I’m hopeful that this will be recorded again properly and released sometime next year.