John Burge

Commissioner: Edward Norman

Premiere: Edward Norman, organ, St. George's Cathedral, Kingston, Ontario, December 19, 2007.

Duration: 6' 30"

Program Note: John Burge’s, A Christmas Quodlibet, was composed in the summer of 2007 for Edward Norman, organist and choir director at St. George's Cathedral in Kingston, Ontario.  Edward was starting his second year in this position and had asked John if he had a work for organ related to Christmas that could possibly be included on a planned CD of Christmas organ music.  Not wanting to see an opportunity go unrealized, John responded that it wouldn't take too much time to construct an organ composition that combined an original theme with two traditional Christmas carols, Silent Night and The First Noel.  These two carols had already been worked together by the composer in an SSA choir and orchestra composition that had been written for the St. Louis Children's Chorus.  Entitled, And the Angel Said, this latter work is published by Boosey and Hawkes (M-051-47736-4).

A "quodlibet" simply refers to a piece that combines two or more independent melodies.  Often these melodies are familiar tunes and the charm of the form is that the listener doesn't expect them to fit together. This quodlibet takes a rather systematic approach in the compositional design by first presenting the original melody alone and then combining it with each of the carols separately and finally ending with the original melody played simultaneously with both carols.  Between each of these presentations, the music modulates to different keys,  sometimes in a quite chromatic fashion.

It is perhaps curious to note that the idea of combining the two carols occurred to the composer many years before when he was asked to improvise some piano music for a Christmas pageant at St. George's Cathedral.  At that time his two young boys were participating in the event.  It seems somehow fitting that this idea should now become a much more involved work for the organist and organ at the same church.