composer
Benjamin de Murashkin was born in Denmark in 1981, but already at the age of one moved to Australia with his family, where he lived for 21 years before returning ...
related works
Three Romances : for orchestra / Clara Schumann; orchestrated by Benjamin de Murashkin
Genre:
Orchestra
Subgenre:
Orchestra
Scoring:
2fl ob eh 2cl 2fg 2h etpt str
Genre:
Vocal music
Subgenre:
Mixed choir and organ
Scoring:
sopr alt ten bas GK4 org
Gebed om vrede : voor gemengd koor en orgel, (1984) / Albert de Klerk
Genre:
Vocal music
Subgenre:
Mixed choir and organ; Mixed choir and piano
Scoring:
GK3 org
Salmo 150 : per coro misto e organo elettronico / Jan Wisse
Genre:
Vocal music
Subgenre:
Mixed choir and organ
Scoring:
GK4 el.org
composition
Kyrie : for mixed choir with optional organ / Benjamin de Murashkin
Description:
Coming off a year of studying Palestrina’s style, I took the commission to compose choir music for services at Trinitatis Church in Copenhagen as an opportunity to take what had been a purely technical exercise and process it more creatively through my own compositional work. The conflict of having centuries past looking over my shoulders while wanting to break free of those stylistic rules resulted in music that straddles a fine line somewhere between pastiche and my own individual style.
In medieval Paris, composers started playing with the idea of singing multiple lines, giving birth to what we know as polyphony. Originally this took the shape of singing enormously embellished melismas on top of extremely elongated Gregorian chants. By the time of the Renaissance this practice was still in use by composers such as Palestrina, the chants now subtly hiding in plain sight in one of many voices, structurally and harmonically anchoring the music. I decided to take the challenge on myself, having altos and tenors take the original chant in the Kyrie and Christe sections respectively, while the rest of the choir weaves their lines around them.
Framing the music and giving it an other-worldly quality is the addition of a barely audible organ hanging onto harmonies in the background. This added layer sets the scene and at once emphasises the slow harmonic changes underlying the swifter movement of the many melodies, while also adding to the sense of space and peace in the music.
Benjamin de Murashkin