Mathias, William – Three (3) Pieces – Invocations, Opus 35, Carillon (1989), Antiphonies Opus 88/2 – Organ Solo OUP

Three of William Mathias’s substantial virtuoso organ compositions which will appeal to experienced organists who want attractive and challenging music for their recitals.

Programme Notes: Three Organ Pieces comprises Invocation, Antiphonies, and Carillon.

Carillon was first performed by Todd Wilson at the Montreat Conference on Music and Worship in Montreat, North Carolina, in June 1990. The piece was commissioned by the Allen Organ Company as ‘an extension of their commitment and responsibility to the organ community and the cause of organ and sacred music’. The composer was asked to provide a piece ‘appropriate for both church and recital… within the grasp of a normal player and a normal audience’.

As its title suggests, Carillon is inspired by the sonority of bells – more particularly, the overtone harmonies generated by bells, and the type of music associated with the carillons of Belgium and Holland: simple, bright, and generally repetitive tunes played over relatively slow-moving, sonorously constant pedal harmonies.

The piece, luminous and festive in nature, builds to a climax in which the various bell pedals are juxtaposed in bracing harmonies while the tunes peal out jubilantly above. (Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press)

Paperback
Published: 20 May 1999
Duration: 10′, 10′, 5.5 minutes
Difficulty: Difficult
52 Pages | 311x232mm
ISBN: 9780193755598

William Mathias was born in Whitland, Dyfed. He studied at the University College of Wales, and subsequently at the Royal Academy of Music. From 1970-1988 he was Head of the Music Department at the University College of North Wales, Bangor. Mathias musical language embraced both instrumental and vocal forms with equal success, and he addressed a large and varied audience both in Britain and abroad. He was also known as a conductor and pianist, and gave or directed many premières of his own works. He was made CBE in the 1985 New Year’s Honours. In 1992, the year of his death, Nimbus Records embarked upon a series of recordings of his major works.