No. 4 - Ite Missa Est (4 Orgelstukken)

This is quite a weird-wonderful/unique-awful/well-conceived-pointless/memorable-I hope I never hear it again sort of piece...

When I started this, and most of these were "learned" and played in a day, I thought: "I've got to come up with some clever excuse as to why I didn't record THIS thing! It makes NO sense!"

As I began to "play at it," I sort of got to like it more - while still hating it.

A LARGE part of the problem is that it's in manuscript, and while it's quite "neat" it's quite cramped, and the VERY high notes of one line visually get lost in the low notes of the next. I had to write the letter names of the top notes of the BIG chords.

The work is based on the deacon's closing line at the Mass: "Ite missa est" (The Mass is ended".

He sets in a swingy, march-like thing, with first a continuous pedal part, and later in HUGE chords. Most of the pedal part is in octaves, and he also likes to write 3-part pedal lines. The final chord has 3 pedal notes, and once, after a pretty good take, I missed the LAST chord... :-(

Anyway, I'd probably play it again at some point, but as much as I dislike it, at the same time, I think its a really cool thing!

The end goes on too long. Octave pedal scales up and down, and then suspension, suspensio, suspension, pedal scale, suspension, etc.

Once again, just to make the lines stand out, I used the tuber at the end.

See what YOU think of this thing... ;-)