On this occasion it’s not one but multiple killings that i’m commemorating. In 2005 i composed a number of short hymns and motets, most of which were planned to be incorporated into a very much larger work that i began around the same time (a darling that will itself, one day, also have to be killed).
Four of these i thought of as my ‘Icelandic hymns’, as all but one of them used texts taken from the Passíusálmar [Passion hymns] composed by one of Iceland’s most famous poets, Hallgrímur Pétursson, a copy of which i’d bought when i first visited the country in 2001. Each of the tunes was also named after an Icelandic place i had visited.
Jesus, my Lord, I call thee King was composed on 4 March using verses 13 and 15 from hymn 27, and the tune was called Egilsstaðir.
By Thy stripes was composed on 3 June using hymn 14 verse 22 and hymn 43 verse 14; its tune was Husavík.
The odd one out, composed the same day, used the well-known text There is a green hill by C. F. Alexander, to a tune i called Skálholt.
To the city our Lord rode in was composed on 5 June and was longer and more elaborate, using verses 7, 8, 11 and 14 from hymn 31; the tune was named Reykjavík.
Shortly after, on 15 June, i completed a motet setting John Keble’s text When God of old came down from heaven for choir and organ.
Finally, on 26 and 27 June i revised two chorale settings i’d composed some years earlier. O Haupt, voll Blut und Wunden was originally completed on 9 February 2001, and was dedicated to the memory of J. S. Bach, because i first fell in love with chorales when i discovered his St. John Passion as a teenager.
O Traurigkeit, O Herzeleid was completed on 12 March 2002, dedicated to the memory of Franz Liszt, because at the time i was very much in love with his work Via Crucis, which uses this chorale (as well as O Haupt).
O Haupt and O Traurigkeit (and a third, unfinished setting of O große Lieb, o Lieb ohn’ alle Maße, begun on 30 April) were composed during a time when i was directing a church choir, and they performed O Haupt just once, on 4 March 2001, the first Sunday of Lent. All of the other pieces were composed for the planned much larger work (and the chorales would have been incorporated into this too), and were never shown to anyone. So, like most of the rest of these dispatched darlings, almost none of them has been performed. In some respects they were trivial pieces, but i was definitely pleased with each of them, and they did interesting things in their relationship to their respective texts. But i’ve known for a long time that not one of them needs to exist any longer, and i certainly don’t want any of them to be performed. So today, all of their respective sketches, scores and digital files have been deleted.
