Panoramic Pulse

For organ solo. Dedicated to Jelena Bazova.

In the period that I was engaged with a choir in my hometown, playing the piano and organ in religious services, I was inspired to write a piece for organ, because I was fascinated with the instrument’s possibilities. A tone can last as long as you want to, and combined with a colouring/registration of your own choosing, I was enchanted completely.

In this piece, I work with expanding and contracting time. The changing meters throughout the piece make this clear: the number of beats in each ‘bar’ gradually diminish, increase and fluctuate. I wanted the music to have something illogical and unpredictable, like the breathing of something living, be it an living animal or something more abstract like a forest or ocean. This piece consists of two big breathing cycles, with in between smaller cycle of fluctuating time. Not only the harmonies accelerate and slow down: the pulse in the pedal follows the expanding and contracting of harmonic time virtually parallelly. The slow stable walking of the melody in the third layer and is a constant reference point for the other two elements.