This piece has actually been up on IMSLP for a little while now, but I didn’t want to write about it until I had a chance to record it. The previous two pieces that I wrote had three parts to them each: blank, blank, and blank. The idea being that they would fit a liturgy nicely with a prelude, offertory, and postlude. The other element I kept in mind was play-ability with both of them possibly being done with manuals only or with pedals. With that in mind, I recorded the first two on a portative organ at St. Andrew’s. For the third (and final?, I am not sure yet) work in this series, I felt that an all manuals work needed to be next. Consequently, I didn’t feel like the portative would express the music as well as the large E.M. Skinner/Lulley organ.
Two things about the individual movements: I wrote an invention because I have a student currently studying it and thought it would make a nice middle movement. Inventions are not strict in their form or formula, as say, compared to a fugue. But when teaching counterpoint in composition, it works well as a culmination of two part exercises. (In my method of teaching counterpoint in composition, Sinfonia would be end goal for three voices and Fugue is of course, four.) Secondly, the Sortie went through a lot of drafts. I love using minimal techniques and uneven numbers of measures; it keeps the piece disproportionate in just the right way.
You can find the score free on IMSLP here!