Three liturgical improvisations in a row! I’ve had a good run with my improvisations during services this past month. A very long story short: we had a change of plans and decided to have an evensong on Pentecost as a sending off for the choir season. Because I was in DC the week before and I had to have three other pieces in my fingers, I felt that one more large work was a little too much. Honestly, I should have done more improvisations that Sunday because no practice for a week (well, lots of mental playing but not hands on keys).
But that’s the point of this post! It goes without saying that the most well known work based upon this chant is Maurice Duruflé’s Prelude, Adagio, and Chorale Variations on Veni creator spiritus (here is a link is to Johann Vexo’s superb performance of the piece). I have never played the piece fully but have learned parts of the piece individually – maybe someday I’ll give it a shot and play the whole thing. It’s 20+ minutes of musical perfection that has had a lot of influence on my compositions and improvisations. Check out the opening of my Sonata no. 1 where I try to do a simplified version of Duruflé’s opening to the Prelude. Not that it is an exact copy, it is its own thing but I never want to hesitate from whom I am stealing from.
This particular postlude takes its cues from the IV Variation at the very end of the work. Again, I was doing my own thing especially since it is an improvisation, but I wanted to give the toccata a full journey similar to the toccata in that fourth variation. I took an ABA like structure (my favorite) and I tried to use the same kind of tonal transitions that Duruflé uses in his compositions. The result is something I’m really proud of: an improvisation that is the proper length and moves when it needs to. A five minute improv is not always a part of a Sunday morning liturgy but this particular liturgy afforded me an opportunity to do something a little more epic. So here I present an improvisation from an evensong that was geared towards the music and the musicians making the music!