Description
A modern tapestry of polyphony and instrumental fantasy for guitar solo based on medieval chant.
Written: fall, 1997
Duration: 8 minutes; 4 pages
Skill level: moderate difficulty; stretches
Instrumentation: guitar solo
World premiere: Frank Wallace in Wurzburg, Germany, 2007
Recording: Oracion by Jan Bartlema on Daminus, 2012
I became involved with the performance of medieval music shortly after graduation from the San Francisco Conservatory. In the fall of 1974 I joined the Quadrivium, a school of performance of early music in the Boston area run by my mentor-to-be Marleen Montgomery. I fell in love with the sounds and spirituality of the repertoire. That feeling deepened in 1979 when my ensemble Trio LiveOak spent three months hiking through the Pyrenees to sing in dozens of the 2,000 Romanesque chapels of Catalunya, Spain.
The piece starts with not the actual chant, but a second part that comes from the St. Martial school chant. The two-part version is then heard and is woven into a modern tapestry of polyphony and instrumental fantasy around the three sections of the tune.