Consortium Internationale Compositorum

Perosi/Ciampa: Tristis est anima mea

admin — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:54:27 +0000

This short yet dramatic work is very Romantic in character, and is ideal for Lent and Holy Week. English and Latin texts.

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Leonardo Ciampa: 25 Pieces for Advent and Christmas

admin — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 10:23:38 +0000

25 Pieces for Advent and Christmas

This collection is the result of twenty yearsʾ worth of Advent and Christmas services, Masses, concerts, and recordings. Most of the twenty-five organ works were directly inspired by whatever organ I was playing at the time. The most distinguished of these was the renowned 1859 E. & G. G. Hook Organ at First Baptist Church in Jamaica Plain, which I had the honor of playing between 1989 and 2001. Advent and Christmas offered the best opportunities to exploit this instrumentʾs full palette of tone colors. On 18 January 2005 the organ perished in a fire, a tragedy that I have never gotten over. For me, a December without organ pipes would be like a framed canvas without paint on it. It is my sincerest hope that the music in this collection add a few drops of color to your Yuletide celebrations. (Leonardo Ciampa, 2009)

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Audio demos

Avvento (Advent Prelude), Op. 51

Diptych (Part I only), Op. 50

Advent Emerald (Smeraldo d’Avvento)

Jesu, Redemptor Omnium, Op. 63

BRAHMS-CIAMPA Es ist ein Ros’ entsprungen

David Briggs

admin — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 20:10:33 +0000

The Consortium Internationale Compositorum is proud to announce that David Briggs, one of the world’s great musicians, has accepted a commission to write a new composition for organ entitled “The St. Clotilde Pentaptych.” The new piece will be available in 2010.

The work will consist of five short movements, each of 2-2.5 minutes in length. Each movement will be Mr. Briggs’s fantasy of how one of the organists of St. Clotilde’s Basilica in Paris would have improvised on the Gregorian Ave Maria. The movements will be: 1. Franck, 2. Pierné, 3. Tournemire, 4. Bonnal, and 5. Langlais. (Briggs studied with Langlais.)

Mr. Briggs is one of the most gifted organ improvisers in the world. His “Pentaptych” is sure to enter the repertoire of organists throughout the world.

Leonardo Ciampa: Shenandoah

admin — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 19:43:36 +0000

Leonardo Ciampa: Shenandoah

Maestro Ciampa composed this arrangement of the beloved American song “Shenandoah” in July, 2009, as an encore for his tour of organ recitals in the Shenandoah Valley. It was first played on 19 July 2009 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Salem, Virginia. This very lush arrangement has the benefit of being playable on most any type of organ.

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This demo was performed by Giuseppe Habicht, using samples of the J. J. Binns organ (1901), Old Independent Church, Haverhill (U.K.), sampled by Lavender Audio http://www.lavenderaudio.co.uk and loaded into the Hauptwerk organ sample software http://www.crumhorn-labs.com . (As such, it is a virtual recording and does not claim to be an on-site recording of the instrument.) Recording by Rob Stefanussen.

Leonardo Ciampa: Missa Salutaris op.89

admin — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 16:32:44 +0000

Leonardo Ciampa: Missa Salutaris

Maren Montalbano, mezzosoprano
Leonardo Ciampa, organ
Recorded summer, 1997
CIC wishes to thank to Maren Montalbano (http://marenmontalbano.com) for her kind permission to use these sound clips.

“The Gloria is really a mini opera. It should be on every alto’s voice recital. … Ciampa is writing in the style of the late Romantic Italian composers, but the music still sounds fresh. … The Benedictus is like heavenly light … In the Agnus Dei he followed the old convention of bringing back the music of the Kyrie, giving the Agnus Dei a note of finality. … With this lyrical, almost operatic Mass, Ciampa has resurrected his personal version of the stile nuovo. In that sense, he is the 21st-century Viadana.” — Joseph Cirou

Joseph Cirou is a former student of the late Dr. Edward Eigenschenck, himself a student of Louis Vierne. Mr. Cirou is the music director at St. John Vianney Church in Lithia Springs, GA. He completed undergraduate studies in organ at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago, IL, and a Masters Degree with a concentration in voice from the same school. During his college years he sang with the Pro Oratorio Singers, which specialized in concert productions of the Oratorios of Perosi.

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Andrea Amici: La Fleur Nuptiale per pianoforte

admin — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 07:26:36 +0000

Andrea Amici: La Fleur Nuptiale per pianoforte

La Fleur nuptiale is a short piece for piano, a musical meditation on the beauty of the unique and unrepeatable moment of marriage, dedicated to my beloved American friends Leonardo Ciampa and Jeanette McGlamery for their wedding.

Echoes of music of the past come together in the synthesis of a language that spans musical time, suspending the atmosphere in a perpetual waiting to reach a final climax with a quote from the wedding song par excellence, the chorus from Wagner’s Lohengrin, seen as if a reflection in the water.

The piano writing tends to dilate the melodic ideas across the width of the keyboard, even hinting at a Romantic style of pianism, with a succession of episodes, linked together by some basic motivic ideas, sharing a common fundamental idea and harmonic procedures typical of the writing of the author, based on a form of free diatonism, without extreme simultaneous chromatic complications, with chord structures built from time to time on characteristic intervals.

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Victor Searle: Three Japanese Melodies

admin — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 15:21:19 +0000

Victor Searle: Three Japanese Melodies

Victor Searle has provided three arrangements of Japanese melodies, all colorfully registered and skillfully produced.

This is the first publication of a music by Victor Searle within the Consortium Internationale Compositorum, provided in an elegant edition, enriched by a reprint of a watercolor by Kenji Murata.

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Watch the video of Lullabye of Itsuku from the Three Japanese Melodies by Victor Searle, played by Russ Greene (organ) in an AGO Organ Spectacular Concert, “The Organ Heard ‘Round the World” on the Phoenix organ of St. Andrew’s Anglican in Winnipeg

Brahms:Fourteen Chorale Preludes Op. 122a

admin — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 16:47:26 +0000

An exciting new Brahms project is slated for completion this summer, to be published by CIC (compositorum.com).

For over a hundred years, Brahms’s final opus, the beautiful Eleven Chorale Preludes for Organ (Op. 122), has inspired both admiration and curiosity. George Bozarth, Barbara Owen, and other musicologists have opined that Brahms actually intended Fourteen Chorale Preludes, divided into two groups of seven.

The order of the first seven in Brahms’s manuscript is 1, 5, 2, 6, 7, 3, 4. Clearly, the current No. 11 would be No. 14. That leaves Nos. 8, 9, and 10. What would comprise the missing three?

The splendid Prelude and Fugue on O Traurigkeit (WoO 7) spring to mind. But that still gives us only 13.

Rumor has it that Brahms sketched a few measures of a canonic treatment of Es ist ein Ros’ entsprungen. We know that several of Op. 122 are revisions of earlier works. We know also that Brahms and Joachim liked to write canons, during the great days when Schumann was still among the living.

In this spirit, CIC is preparing the very first edition of “Brahms’s Vierzehn Choralvorspiele (Fourteen Chorale Preludes), Op. 122a“. Set I will consist of Nos. 1-7 (in the afore-mentioned order). Set II will include (in a yet-to-be-determined order), Nos. 8-11, O Traurigkeit, and a canonic treatment of Es ist ein Ros’ entsprungen, composed by Leonardo Ciampa, in a Brahmsian harmonic language but with the canonic technique employed by Schumann in his Six Studies for Pedal Piano, Op. 56

This exciting publication will be available on or before September 1st.

Andrea Amici: Salmo 116 per coro e pianoforte

admin — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 18:25:44 +0000

A.Amici: Salmo 116 per coro e pianoforte

Psalm 116 for chorus and piano by Andrea Amici was premiered on April 27, 2009, at the Lutheran Church in Naples, during the final round of the Ninth Annual Composition Contest on Sacred Texts “Musica e Cultura a Piazza dei Martiri“, sponsored by the Comunità Evangelica Luterana in Naples, Italy.

The chorus, directed by Eduardo Bochicchio, performed the works of the five finalists, and at the end of the concert the jury, consisting of Patrizio Marrone (Director of the Naples Conservatory), Carlo Galante (composer), Gaetano Panariello (composer), Daniele Spini (Artistic Director of Music and Dance, Udine Opera House), and Eduardo Bochicchio (Director of the Lutheran Choir of Naples) awarded Andrea Amici First Prize.

The work is a musical rendering of one part of the splendid text of Psalm 116, expressing hope for redemption and for the final reward. The composition goes through different atmospheres, suggested by the text whose literal and spiritual meaning is enhanced by a musical language that hearkens back to older choral forms (Madrigals, etc.). The vocalism is molded on the text, and the harmony combines tonality and modality. These various sonic textures are woven with the piano accompaniment, seeking to synthesize notes with words.

Watch the video on YouTube

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Click to listen to the live recording of the first performance of Salmo 116, Naples (IT), April 27, 2009. Coro Luterano di Napoli, Eduardo Bochicchio (conductor)

Leonardo Ciampa: Orgeleinbuch

admin — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 08:32:37 +0000

While Orgelbüchlein means, “Little Book for the Organ,” Orgeleinbuch means, “Book for the Little Organ.” Even though I enjoy playing a four-manual E. M. Skinner, I derive no less pleasure playing the historic, one-manual organs of Europe. Sometimes the keyboard offers only 45 notes. What does one play on these instruments? Since Vierne, reams of “manuals only” music has been written. Unfortunately little of it is effective, or even playable, on these historic instruments. I decided to fill this void, creating music not constrained by these limitations but inspired by them. Das Orgeleinbuch runs the gamut of styles – fugues, choralpreludes, Gregorian preludes, dances, etc. The sacred pieces explore all of the important Christian seasons, while the secular ones have no ecclesiastical implications. Certain pieces can be played on organs with divided keyboard. (Such organs offer very interesting registrational possibilities). Each of the pieces can be played on a 45-note keyboard without pedals.

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L.Ciampa: Orgeleinbuch	Audio Samples 16. Brahmsiana 13. Scarlattiana 1. Jerusalem, Quæ Ædificatur 8. St. Thomas (Wade) 2. Mélodie Victorienne Recorded by Jonathan Orwig with the virtual instrument Antegnati (1636) Chiesa di San Carlo, Brescia (Sonus Paradisi http://www.sonusparadisi.cz) (Hauptwerk Organ software)
19. Regina Cæli Recorded by Jonathan Orwig virtual instrument: E.M. Skinner (1928) Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church, Chicago (Milan Digital Audio http://www.milandigitalaudio.com) Hauptwerk Organ Software	20. Noël Recorded by Jonathan Orwig – virtual instrument: Marchand/Sals (1627/2000) Cathédrale de Forcalquier (Sonus Paradisi http://www.sonusparadisi.cz) (Hauptwerk organ software)
24. He is Risen! Recorded by Jonathan Orwig – Mundt (1673) virtual instrument: Church of Our Lady, Tyn, Czech Republic (Sonus Paradisi http://www.sonusparadisi.cz) Hauptwerk Organ Software
The demos on this page are virtual recordings and do not claim to be on-site recordings of the instruments.