In Nomine

(2000)
For Orchestra

Duration: ca. 11 minutes

Instrumentaion:
(2, 2, 2, 2 - 4, 2, 2, 1 - timp, 2 perc. - strings)

First performance:
This piece has not yet been performed.

You could be the first!
If interested, e-mail
kurt@kurtmortensen.org

Program Notes

In England during the Renaissance, the composer John Taverner (ca.1490-1545) wrote his Missa Gloria Tibi Trinitas which was the catalyst for the composition of a group of instrumental works by numerous composers with the universal title In Nomine. Taverner’s mass was based on the Sarum chant Gloria Tibi Trinitas, but this new composition itself became the foundation of other music as well. In the Sanctus and Benedictus section of this Mass, the melody used during the setting of the words "In Nomine" became the basis (or cantus firmus) for these new instrumental pieces. Taverner was the first to conceive of this idea and soon after for some unknown reason many of his fellow composers began writing their own In Nomines for solo keyboard or viol consort. Essentially, an In Nomine is a piece which utilizes the one section from the Gloria Tibi Trinitas mass as a cantus firmus which is itself based on another cantus firmus. The present work is an extension of this tradition, only scored for orchestra.

Unlike its Renaissance counterparts, the cantus firmus in the present work is not embedded in a particular voice or instrument with the other melodies forming around it. Rather this fixed tune appears in many different manifestations in numerous instruments throughout the work. For example, the note pattern may be preserved, but a new rhythmic idea is applied to it or it may be presented as a mensuration canon between several different voices. One particularly effective use is a quick klangfarbenmelodie (tone color melody) canon between the winds and both vibraphones. Fragments of other voices (not the cantus firmus) from the aforementioned "In Nomine" section of the Sanctus and Benedictus of the Missa Gloria Tibi Trinitas have also been broken down and reassembled in the orchestral piece. This was a process that I first explored in my work Pange Lingua (1998-1999) for 2 sopranos, piano, 2 marimbas and string trio. This technique can be equated to the centonization procedure used in the Middle Ages, where a number of the Gregorian chants had been assembled from predetermined pitch patterns. In the case with my work, a fixed source was taken and then broken down into various patterns and then "re-centonized" into new melodies. Most of the melodic lines in the piece can be traced back to either the cantus firmus or small fragments from Taverner’s mass. The only exception to this is when a melody is harmonized by other voices or other extra subtleties such as the cymbal and timpani parts.