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Behold a Pale Horse (1990-91) |
for organ (or organ & brass) - c.11'
Commissioned by Christopher Bowers-Broadbent with financial assistance from Southern Arts, England.
First performance: 20 September, 1990, Turner Sims Concert Hall, Southampton, England (and recorded by the BBC for Radio 3), Christopher Bowers-Broadbent, organ.
Compact disc recording of the version with organ & brass: Christopher Bowers-Broadbent, organ, The Orchestra of St. John's, Smith Square Brass, John Lubbock, conductor, ASV label, CD title: Snakebite CD DCA 991 (released 1997).
Behold a Pale Horse is the first work inspired by a Biblical text I have
written since 1961 when I was a student and set several colourful passages
from Deuteronomy 22 and 23 (in Latin) for the St. Luke's Methodist Church
Youth Choir, St. Petersburg, Florida. The inspiration for this work,
however, is from the New Testament, The Apocalypse in the Book of
Revelation 6:7-8, where John describes his terrifying vision of the last
of the Four Horsemen:
"And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast
say, 'Come and see'. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that
sat on him was Death, and Hellfire followed with him. And Power was given
unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with
hunger, and with death, and with all the beasts of the earth."
The melodic material is based on two sources: Thomas Celano's 13th century dies irae sequence for the Mass of the Dead, and the tritone interval (F to B on the keyboard), the 'devil in music', as the Medieval theorists once called it.
Behold a Pale Horse belongs to a series of toccatas for various instruments which I began in 1977 with Paramell I (muted trombone and muted piano) and have occasionally added to over the years. In 1994 I made an additional version adding a brass septet of 2 trumpets, 2 horns, 3 trombones and tuba to 'colour' the organ part.
Notes © 1991 Stephen Montague