'Templum' for organ, duration 30-40 minutes
- Submitting institution
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Royal College of Music
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 5
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2020
- URL
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http://researchonline.rcm.ac.uk/id/eprint/1300/
- Supplementary information
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-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
-
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- My first aim in writing Templum was to build a structure which derived its vocabulary entirely from the organ’s unique ability to sustain pitches without a decay or change in the timbral qualities of the sound. Secondly, I wanted this to be communicated with a simplicity and clarity which would allow the piece to sound as if it was creating its own continuity as it was being played. Finally, the piece was to be useful in the context of church setting: suitable as an accompaniment to contemplation and prayer. It took me about 6 years to find a means of realising these ambitions within an appropriately rigorous yet straightforward structure. In my initial sketches a series of chords were gradually built up, and then, always in a different order, their notes were released to ‘reveal’ the various intervals of the chords. I grew dissatisfied with the lack of efficacy with which this approach communicated the qualities of intervals and the sense of an externally imposed structure which derived from the ordering of the various choices of chords. In time I found a more consistent and simpler approach, constructing a passacaglia from the four initials of the commissioning organist. I limited the pitches to these notes only and used the theme in the pedals to either activate or stop the same notes being played on the manuals. This allows for different constellations of pitches to emerge as the pedal activates more or less of the same notes across different octaves. These patterns grow and decay in a clear progression throughout the approximate 40-minute duration of the piece. Organists in America, Scotland and Germany have either played Templum or are planning to perform it once restrictions are lifted. All have communicated their enthusiasm for placing the piece in a contemplative context.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -