Home of Organist, Improviser, and Composer Benjamin Cornelius-Bates
Just in time for Lent, I present three new (FREE) Chorale Preludes and Postludes. All based on Lenten tunes, they’re fairly stark and simple. At least they’re meant to be. I plan on recording them and making some future posts with them. I have enjoyed writing these. I’m working on several other larger projects and these pieces are always a nice break. Click on the image below and download!
I have finally reached the movement in The Divine Office that is my earliest “official” composition. I have works that I wrote during my time as an undergraduate, including the much of the music for my wedding, that I don’t take all that seriously. Most of it is, honestly, not very good. It is the sort of thing written by an inexperienced composer.
Except for this singular work! I have at different times attempted to regularly compose (and improvise) contrapuntal works to keep the techniques solidly in my tool box. This movement is the one example of a trio that I kept around because I simply liked it. There are several contrapuntal errors that I overlooked, but as so many works even in the vain of the great masters, the piece is more important than the rules.
Okay, that is quite the statement, but I think I realized from the beginning that my desire for the music to work is more important than any musical “rule” given. I have recently been improvising canons because I find them (always) challenging. It has been unfortunate that the recordings have not turned out well. But much as improvisation has guided my aesthetic, here is a great example from the beginning of my explorations that is really nice and points to many of my interests intersecting the ancient and the modern.
The fifth movement of The Divine Office, Sext, is programmatic not in any specific way except in mood. I wanted the piece to feel the tiredness of work while still moving on; in other words: perseverance. One of the aspects found in monastic life is the constancy of work, though in my work at St. Paul of the Cross Monastery, it is certainly in a more modern idiom. The beginning starts with a simple texture only to complicated by a more trio like texture, more work for the listener and performer alike.
The fourth movement in the Divine Office, Terce, is for me, programmatic of getting to work. I work at a Monastery and I know that I was thinking specifically of working the earth. While my Monastery does not necessarily incorporate an aspect of gardening, as in they do not produce any grown goods such as bread or beer, there is a work to the Passionists that seems to derive from either what the community needs or some form of spiritual direction found in the retreats.
Since the first two movements (here and here) were written first for an evening and the third movement is programmatic of the beginning of the day, this movement is getting work done. That being said, a trio seemed most appropriate to getting to work. Besides the finale, this is the second most challenging movement. As far as I know, Jacob Temple premiered this movement first.
The third movement in the Divine Office begins the day. Prime is the “first” hour of the day, not to be confused with those first two movements that are in the middle of the night. The problem with the Offices is that they are originally based on approximate times in the cycle of the sun and moon. Prime is sunrise, hence the first hour.
I could go on about the origins of the office and how the Benedictines set the standard for their use in the Christian tradition, but more important to this work is the idea of opening the day. There is a clear programmatic sunrise in the music and artwork and I think the music and art present that idea well enough.
This is the first work written separate from the first two and is highly programmatic in that sense. To repeat an earlier compositional thought, it was the first of the latest compositional ideas to be portrayed. By that I mean, it was written closer to 2009 than the other earlier works. The influence of the Saint-Saens B major prelude is, well, all too transparent.
The second movement in the Divine Office work comes from the same place that the first movement did: a flute and organ work reworked for an evening prayer service around 2008. These first two pieces were originally titled Vespers and Benediction. Their use at the beginning of the Divine Office led me to the idea that they could be the beginning of something bigger. And bigger for the organ more specifically.
Later on, when the movement arrives, there is one work written far earlier than the rest. In the meantime though, this is the second of two works originally conceived as a specific set for a specific reason. As a “prelude” and “postlude,” I like them quite a bit together even without the flute.
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.
Under almost every circumstance, I would not post another composer’s work here unless I had a specific reason. That happened once before when I used another composition as direct inspiration for a work that I wrote. In this specific post, I post as a performer as much as a composer. My 5-year old, Malachi, walked up to me recently, handed me some sheets of paper and asked if I could play what he wrote. I was so surprised!
I have performed (and occasionally recorded) a lot of music but this was an absolute honor. Malachi wanted the music to be the CRAZIEST thing I have ever played. I have performed some crazy music, besides the improvisations I like to do, and this was so fun. So much fun. I played for him Stockhausen, Cage, Ligeti, among things I may not remember exposing in his five years of life.
How does one realize an abstract score such as the one given? Well, it starts with many of the elements involved in creating an improvisation – arc, form, continuity. Malachi wanted crazy, so I interpreted that as very un-pitched material, in the tonal sense of pitch material. I think if you follow the video, the rhythms make sense, or at least have logic in my particular interpretation.
Lastly, as a parent, which is something I do not talk about on this blog, this makes me SO FREAKIN’ HAPPY. And when I played my rendition of his notes, he had a HUGE grin. SO EXCITED. SMILEY FACE HAPPY. 🙂 Enjoy!
Oof. That is how I will being today. I have never thought of myself as much of a pianist and the technical ability on a high performing level feels much out of reach. I hosted a recital where the fantastic Ching-Wen Hsiao played some Debussy and reminded me how much I am not a pianist. (This is a backward compliment to say that she is FANTASTIC). That being said, I do try to keep my fundamental skills and technique together by doing my scales and other exercises. Combine this with a renewed interest in piano repertoire (I have been playing through Beethoven and Gershwin for fun) and I have decided to tackle and create some etudes.
The etude, study, is usually used to enhance one’s technique. That means the piece needs to offer some technical challenge while being artistically pleasing as a piece of music. Ideally, of course. My favorite set of etudes are Ligeti’s. So good. There are others, perhaps most famously Chopin’s Etudes.
What can add to this genre? I’ve thought about it and I think there are things that I may be able to offer. This is the second of the Etudes that I plan to write and the first one that I have completed and performed. And as stated at the very beginning: oof. It was hard! The goal of the piece is to stretch your wrist motion and it certainly does that. I’m generally happy with my performance here and I hope to have a few more etude recordings posted over the next several months.
I am pleased to present the second set of Chorale Preludes. This being November (or as conceived, October), I figured a set of Advent Prelude and Postludes would be most appropriate. As mentioned in a previous post, I really haven’t tackled many chorales as an organist/composer because it has never really interested me. Not that I dislike them by any means, because I improvise on them all the time. Composition and improvisation are such different things to me that I feel it’s worth mentioning and exploring.
This particular set of Chorales includes three very well known Advent hymn tunes. The first is perhaps the most connected to how I look at improvising a set of chorale variations: chorale, bicinium, celeste, and toccata. The only missing improvisational element is a trio, which is what happens in the next chorale prelude. I love BESANÇON as a hymn and it is a treat to share these brief variations on them. Click the following link for a copy of the score:
