This Friday, January 7th at 7:30 PM, cellist Franklin Cox premieres my In Nomine as part of the soundON Festival at the Athenaeum Music and Arts Library in La Jolla California. The festival runs from January 6-8 and features the NOISE Ensemble performing a number of new works as well as pieces by established composers. For more info/tickets, see their website.
Program note:
The In Nomine melody, taken from the Benedictus in John Taverner’s Missa Gloria Tibi Trinitas, was one of the most famous bases for English consort music in the Renaissance. Numerous composers incorporated both its melodic material, derived from plainchant, and the harmonic framework of the mass movement in their settings. More recently, a Kairos recording featured new settings by a number of Second Modern European composers. It was in this spirit that I chose to create my own In Nomine for cellist Franklin Cox, who has premiered, composed, and chronicled so much of importance in Second Modernity. The piece begins by lining out the tune. Gradually, microtones, rhythmic talea, and chromaticism derived from rotational arrays complicate the material to create a post-millennial set of variations. In Nomine was composed for Franklin Cox in June 2021.
I am at work on a second In Nomine setting, this one for bass clarinetist Benjamin Fingland and cellist Caleb van der Swaagh.
-Christian Carey
Christian B. Carey 