There have been many simple, prayerful settings of these heartfelt words and my offering is in a similar vein with more than a nod to the pieces by Walford Davies, Howells and Rutter.

Lumen in Umbra is a sustained, atmospheric piece taking two lines of text relating to light and darkness and creating a slowly changing tableau that centres around a high-pitched drone from tuned wine glasses. The light in the piece changes from moment to moment, sometimes bright and coruscating, sometimes wan and distant.

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.

The collection of pieces that comprises the Inventions and Sinfonias have resulted in my longest piece to date and the most concentrated spell of focussing on one instrument since my Transfiguration project for piano (2021-22). The work takes Bach’s monumental work of the same title as its inspiration, though the great master’s influence on the work is more formal and structural than anything musical or artistic. Bach’s work was designed for his students to learn two and three-part contrapuntal keyboard music in a creative and interesting way, fashioned from his own style of composition. Bach composed the two-part (Inventions) and three-part (Sinfonias) in ascending keys from those widely used in the period (eight major and seven minor keys). These two facets (the pedagogical and the tonal) are preserved in my Inventions and Sinfonias, mirroring the key structure of Bach’s and aiming these pieces at good players still on their instrumental learning journey.

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.