Auke Jongbloed, Fantasia “Tota pulchra es”, Op. 11
Score
Fantasia “Tota pulchra es”
Performance
“Tota pulchra es” is an old Catholic prayer, written in the fourth century. It is one of the five antiphons for the psalms of Second Vespers for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. The title means “You are completely beautiful” (referring to the Virgin Mary). The Feast of the Immaculate Conception is the solemn celebration of belief in the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. It is universally celebrated on December 8. The melody of Tota pulchra es can be fount here: https://musescore.com/user/14184756/scores/5318919
Five years ago I was asked by someone to write something to end the singing of this choral in service. Specifically, he asked to “compose a 40 sec piece to end a choral piece (with a bang)”. I first wrote something that was more suitable as a prelude and with not a “bang” at all. A performance of that piece can be heard here:
Then I wrote something that was more like what was asked for. Though I am not virtuosic enough to write a French like Toccata, the music I wrote gives ample possibility to create a nice crescendo. And it ends with some thundering chords, that well could be called “a bang”. A performance of that fragment can be heard here:
Though I quite liked the both fragments, I also felt they were not really suitable as stand alone pieces. They were more like fragments of a larger composition. So I decided to write ‘something’ to form a middle segment of that larger composition and use the existing fragments to build the outer parts around that middle segment. Sadly, a good idea for that middle segment never came and I forgot about the project.
Until a few weeks ago. As inspiration never came spontaneously, I thought I’d try and sit down and just jot down the first ideas that came to mind and try and build something out of that. Surprisingly, that worked quite well. The first ideas provided enough material to work with and after several hours of work the middle part was ready. Lesson learned: don’t wait for inspiration, just start sketching.
The fantasia starts with the first 16 bars of the first fragment I wrote five years ago (then called Prelude) and then switches to the second fragment. I made a few alterations in the left hand part of the second fragment, but for the largest part it is the exact material from 5 years ago. Then follows a bridging section to the middle part. And after the new middle part, the material of the bridging section leads to the last section, which consists of the complete prelude I wrote 5 years ago. As you can hear in the performance of the Fantasia, I play the outer sections a bit more up tempo than five years ago. I think now the music is not solemn, but rather an expression of the beauty the title amentions and should therefore be played a lot more joyeus than I did previously.
And now I consider the composition finished. A bit late for this year’s Immaculate Conception. Perhaps someone can make good use of it next year. Since I put some serious effort in the composition, the score is available for a modest fee.
The recording was done with the Hauptwerk software and the sampleset, made by Sonus Paradisi, of the Cavaillé-Coll organ in the St. Omer church in the city of St. Omer (https://www.sonusparadisi.cz/en/organs/france/st-om.html).
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