What Sudden Blaze of Song is a setting of sections of John Keble’s beloved Christmas Day, famous for its powerful, memorable opening lines. Keble’s poem runs to eleven verses and for practicalities sake, I have taken the first two and sections of the final verse with the beautiful closing statement of ‘And in the darkness sing your carol of high praise.’ My piece aims to capture the atmosphere and majesty of this ‘blaze of song’ with solo lines and choral clusters alternating with more declamatory moments and fanfares of celebration. Song is present throughout, no more so than in the second verse where a long soprano solo is accompanied by a multitude of voices all singing the same song in wordless heterophony.

The Suite (in modo semplice) is (as the title suggests) a collection of simple pieces for a small organ, or alternative. In writing the work I became reacquainted with Herbert Howells’s Lambert’s Clavichord, his set of pieces largely written in 1927 which were in many ways a love-letter to the Tudor period and the composers flourishing at that time. In no way are my pieces a pastiche of Howells, but rather acknowledging the inspiration of his work, which in turn acknowledges that of his Tudor forebears. I thought it made for a satisfying homage to English music that speaks to me above all others.