University of York Music Press

Clinch, a former student of Robert Saxton’s, had been inviting Saxton to attend recitals of his organ works.  This led to a process of discussion about the interpretation of Saxton’s scores.  Clinch invited Saxton to write more organ music, and thus a formal collaboration began, at the Royal Academy of Music, where Clinch holds the post of lecturer.  The recording covers all Robert Saxton’s organ works, except for Music for St. Catharine, which is being revised by the composer.    

During the covid lockdowns, Clinch built a digital instrument which runs Hauptwerk software, thus enabling sampled historic pipe organs to be played through a midi console.  Clinch and Saxton collaborated via the internet, during the pandemic, and finally chose for the recordings the organ of the Magnuskerk, Anloo, The Netherlands.  The software also enabled the composer and the organist to choose the idea acoustic space for the music. 

In the album booklet Clinch talks about about the exploration of interpretational possibilities which might be discovered using historic instruments: ‘As we worked in detail on the specific temperaments, pitch, registrations, tempos and articulation etc., a much deeper relationship between Bach and Saxton’s music emerged. We discussed many of the technical considerations of the generation that grew up with historically informed performance and it was through discussions of Jacques van Oortmerssen’s performances and writings that we began to experiment with the ‘Bachian’ possibilities in Saxton’s music. The use of early fingering as an approach to articulation in modern music was particularly important because many of the textures and motifs seemed to have their origins in the memory of Bach.

‘The recital programme here was constructed to demonstrate these relationships. Initially this was based on genres - hence choral preludes and passacaglias, but it was then expanded to pair works that had a sort of symbiotic relationship. Through these pairings and the use of similar tonal areas, registrations and approaches to articulation and shaping, I hope to demonstrate the fruitfulness of pairing these composers. The semi-quaver figuration that provides the moto perpetuo of Bach’s ‘Dorian’ Toccata falls over into In memoriam Oliver Knussen, and the sighing gestures that form the basis of O Lamm Gottes, unschuldig reappear in Saxton’s Wo Gott zum Haus nicht gibt sein Gunst. Bach’s Passacaglia has been a central influence on Saxton and this has been paired with two of his own memorial works, the Passacaglia for John McCabe and the Tombeau for H.B. (Harrison Birtwistle). Bach’s Das alte Jahr vergangen ist has been included as another nod to the Orgelbüchlein Project which commissioned Wo Gott, but also to highlight the shared stasis of this and the Tombeau. The sense of dance is never far away in Bach or Saxton’s music and the Berceuse, written on the birth of my son, presents another facet of this. The programme ends with the ‘Dorian’ Fugue, providing a grand display of the counterpoint that inspires so much of Saxton’s music and a sense of tonal closure to the overall recital.

‘Although the performance of Saxton was a starting point for this research, through this creative process, ideas have gone back and forth. Ultimately, preparing the Saxton has changed the manner in which I’ve played the Bach as much as the Bach has changed the way I play the Saxton. For the listener, I hope that this demonstrates the ways in which this ‘new’ music relates to the past, but also how ‘new’ Bach’s music can appear. As a method of research, I hope this album demonstrates some of the collaborative possibilities of using digital instruments.’

The album of recordings is on YouTube, Apple and Spotify and the complete album booklet may be downloaded from the YouTube page.