SYMPHONY for VOICES
Composed around 2009 for my great friend Maestro Gonçalo Lourenço, at that time the director of Coro Odyssea, but who has since gone on to conduct the Indianapolis Chorale, Coro Autentico and Coro Cetobrigo, to name but three. Not only did I write this piece for him, we edited the piece together, so that the piece was much easier to perform, and sounded much closer to what I had actually intended.
One of my first commissions was from the Dorchester Abbey Choir, for the visit of the Bishop of Oxford to the Abbey back in 1978, when I was 11 years old. I composed a Kyrie Eleison, and the piece was innovative in a way that I have prided myself on doing with every composition I have composed from the beginning right up to now, and beyond. I have always had a penchant for writing music for choirs and vocal ensembles, so I decided, after composing my 8th Symphony for the St Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra Klassika, to try and compose a large scale piece, only for voices, to stand in as my 9th, and final, essay in the symphonic form.
The piece is in 9 sections and lasts about 50 minutes. It consists of texts from many different places and in 7 different languages, including Russian, Portuguese, English, Latin, and Spanish.
Available from Score Exchange:
Ave Verum Corpus conducted by Gonçalo Lourenço