David McGregor
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Morley
The arresting opening gesture of McGregor’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Morley, the Renaissance composer, feels far removed from the music of his epoch. Here the music is driven by polarities: a violent thunder glissando overshadows quiet, halting statements of Morley’s verse anthem, Out of the Deep, calling out in a struggle to cut through the surrounding turmoil.
Thereafter, the dialectical relationship between the aggressive and lyrical material weakens; a more fully-rendered statement of the Morley’s theme emerges, albeit concealed by the harp’s murky, deeper tessitura. Little by little, this theme comes into focus, its once-submerged melody rising into newfound assurance. This assurance is still plagued by echoes of the earlier violent material, though none with the same ferocity of the opening.
The work ends with a full statement of Morley’s theme in harmonics, a nod to the Interlude from Benjamin Britten’s Ceremony of Carols. Having traversed this antagonistic narrative, the music climbs to the highest reaches of the harp’s range before closing on a low-pitched, consonant dyad, pacifying a register once dominated by unrest.
David McGregorBiography
David McGregor is a British composer and arranger whose choral and instrumental music is performed internationally to critical acclaim. He read Music at Girton College Cambridge, before completing an MA in Composition at the University of York, and has received first prize for a number of competitions, including the Robin Johnson Choral Composition Prize and the Charles Wood Composers’ Competition. Recent international commissions include the Shaughnessy Mass for St John’s Shaughnessy (Vancouver), alongside upcoming UK commissions for St Albans Cathedral and the BBC Radio 3 Proms service. His music has been performed at Westminster Abbey, St Thomas Fifth Avenue and the BBC Singers. David’s works continue to be programmed across the UK and overseas, establishing him as a distinctive voice in contemporary choral music. Through Presteigne Festival’s ‘Compose for Harp’ scheme, he was given a richly rewarding opportunity to explore the harp for the first time, a welcome departure from his choral compositions.
