Bells and Whistles Among Thistles

Organ solo

9 1/2 minutes

Requested by the Coraopolis United Methodist Church as a gift

for Dr. Jeffrey Sterling.  First performed by the composer at the

Coraopolis UMC, Pennsylvania, on November 23rd 2003.

Sound sample - movement 3 into movement 4 -

performed by Alastair Stout

Programme note:

The work was written for Jeffrey, Dara, Shelah and Evan Sterling and is based on a hymn tune I wrote during the summer of 2003. The Sterling family each play a musical instrument: Jeff the guitar; Dara, hand bells; Shelah the flute and Evan the tuba, and the instruments, by coincidence, are among the divisions on an organ. (The guitar relating to the strings, hand bells to chimes or high sounding stops - such as mixtures and mutations - and the tuba to the brass family.) Each instrumental voice is featured in variations on the hymn tune.

The first and fourth variations are carillons (ringing bells) sandwiching a second variation for strings and flutes (whistles) and a third for trumpets and loud-sounding stops - perhaps the thistles of the organ. I am also half-Scottish, the national plant of Scotland being the thistle, and I quite liked the alliteration of the title.

To be a more musically specific, the hymn tune is heard most clearly in the third variation during the broad pedal statements at the beginning, middle and end of the movement. In between are fast, scalic flourishes for trumpets and bright sounding stops in which the hymn tune is transformed, at a speed many times faster than the pedals, by being displaced up or down one or two half steps. Beneath, holes in the pedal’s theme are bridged by a series of chords.

The second variation uses different forms of the hymn tune: upside down (inverted), reversed (in retrograde) and reversed upside down (retrograde inversion). This is the reason it is unintelligible as a hymn tune but it does develop into interesting melodies for the flute stops and harmonies for the strings.  Ending the third variation, and sub-dividing the second, are brief harp-like arpeggiated passages that accompany a melody in the pedals. The melody is a sound bite from one of the hymn tune’s transformations, transposed and extended each time.

The outer variations develop only a cross-section of the hymn tune. This ‘close up’ is heard in two-part counterpoint on a 2-foot flute in the pedals. High above, the hands play chords created by superimposing all the different forms of the hymn tune and on a high registration rich in harmonics, like bells. The final movement is a mirror of the first, creating a satisfying symmetry to the piece.