Rory Boyle

Programme Note

I first came across Tallis's perfect little "Hymnus" O Nata Lux when I was a chorister at St. George's Chapel, Windsor, and its simple starkness has affected me ever since. Based on a series of four-note figures, and also containing two fantastic examples of false relations in the later cadences, I have found it difficult to shake off its sublime influence and so, when I was commissioned by the John Armitage Memorial Trust to write a work for brass quintet and organ, I felt that this was a good opportunity to mark this 'friend' of so many years by making what is effectively a fantasia based on Tallis's work. This piece consists of a series of variants and ends with the quintet stating the original hymn (handily scored for 5 voices) against interruptions from the organ. In fact, throughout, the quintet and organ are set against each other perhaps reflecting the fact that Tallis had to endure the religious and political conflicts that raged around him during the reigns of the four monarchs that he served under - his religion did not tally with the accepted one for much of the time and yet he survived into old age. He must have been a very remarkable man.