The Sonata for organ by Peter Tranchell, a former Precentor of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, was written in 1958 for Peter le Huray, a fellow lecturer in the Music Faculty of Cambridge University, and Director of Music at St Catharine’s College. The music is closely based on the dedicatee’s name, and the third movement makes extensive use of the plainchant Antiphon Tu es Petrus. The title page quotes the Antiphon melody together with the Acrostic—an arrangement of the letters of the name Peter Geoffrey le Huray:
EEGEFFEEHA
PTRORYLURY
The first movement, Preludio – Allegro molto, is a toccata, with perpetuum mobile semiquavers in the right hand and mildly dissonant left hand chords in short crotchet and semiquaver phrases, suggesting the rhythms of Morse Code.
These are, of course, the non-pitch letters of the name Peter Geoffrey le Huray: PTRORYLURY. The top notes of the chords and the angular pedal theme which follows are derived from the pitch letters EEGEFFEEHA (H = B natural). The left hand then introduces a two-part version of the EEGEFFEEHA theme, continuing on to a new melody, based on the LH chords of the opening in arpeggiated form, together with more dissonant harmonies. This section forms the central part of an arch-structure, and the movement closes with a short coda, finishing on a highly-spiced E major chord. Throughout this movement the harmonic idiom is highly chromatic and often dissonant, though there is always an underlying sense of tonality. The rhythm of the name Peter le Huray is frequently projected.
Andante ostinato is imbued with feelings of longing, with two major climaxes, ecstatic or anguished, perhaps both. The opening three-part counterpoint makes extensive ostinato use of the retrograde version of the theme (AHEEFFEGEE), and this is in evidence for most of the movement. The predominantly dissonant idiom finally gives way to more romantic harmonies, ambiguously suggesting fulfilment or resignation, surmounted by the AHEEFFEGEE melody.
Tu es Petrus in fuga starts with a grand, richly harmonised statement of the Tu es Petrus melody (Tempo comodo ma non lento), before embarking upon a fugue (Allegretto con moto), based on EEGEFFEEHA as the main subject, and of extreme complexity, both contrapuntal and rhythmic. The time signature is 4/4 , but as often as not the effect is 3 + 3 + 2/8 , and the periodic appearances of the plainchant melody in this rhythm, over a somewhat irreverent oom-cha-cha accompaniment, recall Tranchell’s compositions for the theatre. The fugue ends with two further expansive harmonisations of Tu es Petrus, linked by a characteristically pianistic flourish.
There are hardly any indications of registration or dynamics, apart from a few crescendi and suggestions of balance, such as ‘en dehors’ and ‘equal manuals’. The title page includes the instruction: Each movement may be played separately either loud or soft.
The present edition, the first of Peter Tranchell’s Sonata for organ to be published, has been type-set from the composer’s manuscript by John Gwinnell and published by The Peter Tranchell Foundation. The Sonata for organ is recorded with permission from the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.
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