Premiere Performance

Weds 18th March, 1.15pm – 1.45pm at The Temple Church, London
(admission free)

Played by Clive Driskill Smith, organist at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford

My new organ symphony Columba is inspired by verses from the poem Altus Prosator thought to have been written by St. Columba in the 6th century. Each of the four movements takes a separate verse of the poem as inspiration for the music. The poem is outstandingly ambitious in content. The whole range of the Bible from Genesis through to the Apocalypse is compressed into twenty-three stanzas. It is the most essential information about the world, as an early mediaeval Christian saw it.

1. The High Creator, the Unbegotten Ancient of Days, was without origin of beginning, limitless. He is and He will be for endless ages of ages.
2. The great Dragon, most loathsome, terrible and ancient, which was the slippery serpent…. dragged down with him the stars into the pit.
3. The Most High, planning the frame and harmony of the world, had made heaven and earth, had fashioned the sea and the waters, and also the shoots of grass, the little trees of the woods, the sun, the moon and stars, fire and necessary things….
4. At the blast of the First Archangel’s wonderful trumpet, the strongest vaults and tombs shall break open… the bones gathering to their joints from every place, their ethereal souls meeting them.