Carillon on 'Orientis Partibus'

"I was born in Coventry on the 19th September 1926. It was the year of the General Strike....My father worked in the motor industry and was 'on the dole' at the time when I was born. He played the piano but his main instrument was the mandolin-banjo.....Apparently money was so short at the time that it was necessary for him to pawn his mandolin in order to be able to buy what was immediately required for my coming into the world. I of course knew nothing about money problems, either then, or at any other time in my childhood. It was quite idyllic, and I have only the happiest memories of my home life - 'Heaven lies about us,,,,'"
An appropriate way to start my notes on what would be Arthur Wills's 100th Birthday.
Written in 1972/3 (Arthur gives both dates!), the piece is built upon the 12th-century French tune Orientis Partibus (“From the regions of the East”). Historically, this melody was central to the Festum Asinorum, or "Feast of the Ass" (an offshoot of the medieval Feast of Fools). Celebrated in January, the festival commemorated the flight into Egypt, honouring the donkey that carried Mary and Joseph. During the medieval liturgy, the congregation would playfully mimic the braying of a donkey at the end of each verse.
Wills translates the joy and chaotic energy of this historic festival into a jangling, virtuosic toccata. True to its title, the organ mimics a great carillon of swinging bells, layering shifting cross-rhythms and mildly dissonant harmonies over the medieval plainchant. The driving syncopation gives the work an almost jazzy, modern pulse while maintaining the unmistakable harmonic weight of the mid-20th-century French symphonic organ tradition.