Home of Organist, Improviser, and Composer Benjamin Cornelius-Bates
Today I present the next two Lenten Improvisations. The first, Improvisation II, has similarities to Improvisation I, but fleshed out in a different manner. The second, Improvisation III, is an inverted canon. Of course, that’s a simplification of technique, but each is again an exploration of a single stop color that can be found on most instruments. I continue to find the exploration of an individual stop to be challenging and the challenge is what makes it inviting!
Greetings on this First Sunday in Lent! For the first time ever, I am making a post that does not involve some kind of Youtube video. Mostly due to time, I don’t foresee myself having the opportunity to make any recordings of this next round of short pieces over the coming weeks. But I still want to get these works out in a timely manner, namely one piece per week this coming Lenten season. Without further ado, here is the first Lenten Improvisation.
It is a very introspective piece and one that certainly ends on a musical question mark. I think that’s incredibly appropriate to the Lenten season as it anticipates something to come. It is a time of preparation and having music that reflects something coming is hugely important.
Today, I had hoped to present one last Alleluia before Lent starts on Wednesday, but I was unable to get a decent recording that I felt was worthy of posting. This Communion improvisation, on the other hand, is quite nice. It’s static opening motive, I think, lends itself well to the meditative qualities of the communion procession. I am still fascinated trying to use one stop or one color for as long as I think is aesthetically pleasing, which I feel works well here. Not in a contrapuntal way either, simply that the aesthetic and color lends itself to slow change before truly introducing the chant.
As with the previous post, I have been revisiting some of my earliest works. Today brings the middle movement from my Suite (Mouvement), also from 2006. While I will freely admit that the first and last movements aren’t all that great, I do like this middle one quite a bit. It certainly shows the very strong Denis Bédard influence that pervades much of my music, but particularly in my first pieces. In fact, if you put my Suite next to his Suite, it’s pretty obvious how much I paralleled his work in mine. Of course, these years later, I do not think it is a bad thing by any means to imitate those whose works deserve imitation. I’m just happy that this particular movement holds up fairly well by itself.
I recently was revisiting some of my first works when I discovered this little gem from the collection Five Short Pieces (2006). The entirety of the work is dedicated to Denis Bedard and Rachel Alflatt, but they were written for Rachel in a particular situation. The church she worked made a decision to have announcements happen before the prelude and that turned the prelude into an awkward affair. She was looking for short pieces, about 2-3 minutes in length, and I did my best at the time to make that happen. Of the five that I wrote, this is easily my favorite.