The Divine Office is one of the strangest works I have written. By that I mean it has an odd history of being a conglomerate of several different points of composition. I should begin with my brief opinion about the Liturgy of the Hours.
As I have often mentioned in previous posts, I work at a Monastery as the Director of Music in the Church of the Monastery (compared to the Retreat Center, which is part of the Passionist charism). At some point, we had explored the idea of holding specific hours in the Church. It never really caught on, but this piece was compiled and composed in the Fall of 2009 with a specific afternoon prayer in mind.
The first two movements, this being Matins (or Midnight in the Liturgy of the Hours), were originally written for flute and organ manuals. The pedal part takes the place of the flute and this is the result. Originally, as these things happen to be conceived, Matins, was a part of a service at the Monastery. I did not record the original version of the work but rather reworked it into an organ piece and this is the result.
[…] the first two movements (here and here) were written first for an evening and the third movement is programmatic of the […]