Nathan featured in Choir & Organ's May/June 2021 Edition
Written in collaboration with and for organist Rupert Gough, Nathan’s new work has been featured in Choir & Organ’s May/June 2021 Edition, in partnership with National Youth Choirs of Great Britain.
Nathan’s new work for solo organ, storms don’t last forever, was written in collaboration with organist, Rupert Gough, Director of Music at St. Bartholomew-the-Great and Director of Choral Music at Royal Holloway University of London. The work was commissioned by Rhinegold’s Choir & Organ magazine, in a new partnership for 2021 with National Youth Choirs of Great Britain, showcasing a selection of composers that the organisation have supported and promoted in recent years as part of their Young Composers programme.
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About storms don’t last forever
Although I, or anyone else for that matter, would not have anticipated experiencing what we have done in recent times, it has been a sobering reminder of how much music is a balm. Over recent months I have been returning to music that ‘takes me somewhere’. Music that sits with me. Music that enables me to tap into forgotten memories. Music that I have played as a child. Music that I had learned as a teenager. Reliving those long hours, nestled away in a practice room at school, listening to Glenn Gould recordings. Reliving that sense of safety, of blissful otherness.
storms don’t last forever is a response to (or even a reimagination) of J. S. Bach’s chorale setting of “O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort [‘O eternity, you word of thunder’]" (BWV 20, although also adapted for a choral cantata BWV 60), a chorale apt to our current times as we grapple with both loss and perpetual hope. A work for organ of two-halves, there is both a distillation of the original melody by Johann Schop and Bach’s harmonisation, a distant thunder, which dissipates into the chinks of light and hope seen in Johann Rist’s hymn… Read more.
For more information about the music, please visit this dedicated page.
About Choir & Organ’s New Music Series
New Music is a series of specially commissioned pieces for choir or organ written by some of the most talented young composers around. For 2021, we are pleased to join forces with the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain as our New Music partners.
In Choir & Organ magazine, you’ll find a profile of the composer providing an insight into the new work. Here on the New Music web page you’ll find the score in PDF format ready to download and print.
Scores are licensed for six months’ free use – you can print as many copies as you want – before the copyright reverts to the composer. After that date, copies must be ordered from the composer.
New Music brings cutting-edge yet approachable scores direct to your desktop. We hope that you’ll be inspired to perform them as widely as possible. Why not download the latest score now?
Maggie Hamilton
Editor – Choir & Organ
