Catalogue of Compositions
Phillip’s music is strongly influenced by his native Lake District and by history. His main musical influences are found in continuing and reconciling a pastoral British tradition.
What others say…
The Cooke is remarkable…in the background you get a flickering of candles, a halo of light, in the middle is a male choir adoring the Virgin.’
— BBC Radio 3, Record Review
‘Phillip Cooke’s…Ave Maria, mater Dei is enticingly ethereal thanks to a pair of off-stage trebles intensifying its incantatory allure.’
— BBC Music Magazine
‘Cooke is able to compose distinctive settings of familiar liturgical texts with excellent performances and some beautifully sustained pianissimos.’
— The Gramophone
Latest Works
Popular Choral Music for SATB Choir
My setting of the Agnus Dei is in a simple tripartite form, with softer modal writing balanced against more strident homophonic material. This balancing is accentuated by two different harmonic spheres which are in a benign conflict, with one ultimately prevailing over the other. Throughout, the organ acts as both onlooker and participant, providing the necessary detachment to create a meaningful setting of these heartfelt words.
Hodie Christus Natus Est is a homage to that particularly ‘rustic’ element in early medieval church music, where elements of the pre-Christian and Christian rites seemed to coexist in a beguiling symbiosis. The work aims to blend a folksy, communal dance element with more traditional choral writing. It is a light-hearted piece, and the score could be used as a blueprint to a more extreme version of what is composed where the ‘pagan’ aspects of the work could be exaggerated to great effect.
Ubi Caritas is a simple setting of these well-known and much loved words. My work is warm and direct with a wistful melody filtered through the whole choir in its short duration. The work is dedicated to my in-laws on their seventieth birthdays and was written for Benedict Preece and Caritas Chamber Choir who have supported my work with such dedication in 2022.
I Am The Voice is a simple setting of these powerful words from the Book of John. The work is in a direct two-part form, with a passionate chorale following a slowly building textural section.
Featured Instrumental Music
Dialogue takes the ‘Sanctus’ of my 2017 work Missa Sancti Albanus as the source for a spirited exploration of the material and its possibilities on the organ. It largely follows the shape of the original but expands on each section aiming to realise the inherent potential of the music therein. The main deviation is at the end of the work, where the affirming ending of the Sanctus is replaced with a quiet dissipation of the dialogue between voices and musical material.
The Two Recessionals continue the exploration of plainchant in my recent work. The first is a short work based on the St Edmund Antiphon and was written for the Patronal Festival at St Edmundsbury Cathedral. It is in a firm ABA form and progressively builds to a huge climax. The second is a little more subdued and takes the plainchant O lux beata Trinitas as its source material. Again, it exhibits a strong ABA form, but here the B material is taken from my own choral setting of the O lux beata Trinitas text (from 2013) and provides a sonic contrast to the prevailing music.
Three Meditations takes three diverse plainchant themes and recolours them in my own harmonic language, each seeking to bring out different aspects of these beautiful, transcendent pieces of music. The suite works as a broad ABA, with the outer meditations being more thoughtful and discursive and the middle piece being a more concise exploration of one phrase from ‘Christus Vincit’.
Featured Recording
This CD with recordings of my music features 10 pieces from 2008-12, all performed by the Chapel Choir of Selwyn College, Cambridge, Tim Parsons (organ) and Onyx Brass – conducted by Sarah MacDonald.