Prologue, Five Variations, and Finale on
Veni Creator Spiritus

Ambrosian plainchant melody for the Easter hymn
“Hic  est  diesverus  Dei”
and source of the hymn tune for
“Komm,  Gott  Schoepfer,  heiliger  Geist”

        Prologue, Five Variations, and Finale on the plainchant melody, Veni Creator Spiritus, is an extended composition for solo organ, written in a French post-Romantic manner. It was inspired by the breadth and harmonic language of Maurice Duruflé’s magnum opus for organ on the same chant tune.

        The Prologue states the hymn in a boldly declamatory manner. In the first variation, the chant sounds as a pedal solo, accompanied on manuals by a harmonized hymn version of the same tune (“Komm, Gott Schopfer, heiliger Geist”); each phrase is separated by cadenza-like interpolations. The second variation presents the hymn tune soaring above animated rolling triplet figurations in a miniature toccata. The chant's cantus firmus migrates to the tenor register in the third variation for a richly harmonized appearance at a slowed tempo. In the fourth variation, the plainchant is elaborately ornamented, recalling figurations from the Prologue: it is sounded in canon between soprano and alto voices and harmonized by lower voices, all as accompaniment to a simultaneous cantus firmus statement in the pedal. In the fifth variation, Veni Creator Spiritus reappears as a tenor solo, accompanied by soprano and alto voices in lively duet and underpinned by pedal. 

        The Finale's brooding introduction gives way to a developmental presentation of the plainsong tune soaring above and below accompanying voices that move in constant  triplet  motion. As subsequent phrases appear and are interrupted by episodic interludes, intensity builds through to the last chant phrase, sounded in augmented note values. A bold coda is heralded by the return of ornamental figurations from the Prologue and fourth variation, spinning out the chant’s Amen in overlapping imitation; other brief motivic reminders from the first and second  variations reemerge and lead to a strongly affirmative cadence.

Echoes from the past:   Prelude on Veni Creator Spiritus  (1981)

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Here is a curious forerunner that inspired the complete set of variations featured above. The two-page manuscript  document was composed in 1981 while recovering from a head-on automobile accident that occured en route to Storrs, Connecticut, a mishap that landed its composer in Willimantic Community Memorial Hospital. When released, a local Windham family, Hanna and Bruce Clements offered their hospitality. Having recently lost their son, the eldest of four offspring, we were silently mourning our shared woes; no tears were shed openly, and we were able to bolster one another throughout the course of profound losses and sorrows.

The rough score was recopied into an inked version at some later date in the course of continued travels, and the PDF booklet offered below has been prepared from those two pages. The notations for an overlapping legatissimo touch in the hands and detached touch in the pedal cantus firmus serve to highlight the temporal readjustments of time experienced during the years of convalescence and readjustments that followed.

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