Ceremonial [score]

Composed in 2012 and commissioned by percussionist Sarah Mouradoglou, to whom it is dedicated, Ceremonial is a work for percussion ensemble that musically portrays an initiatory journey through the four primordial elements — Earth, Air, Water, and Fire — culminating in a dazzling and radiant apotheosis.

A distinctive rhythmic figure (two quavers – silence – one quaver) recurs throughout the work in varied guises, functioning as a kind of leitmotif guiding the listener-traveller through each stage of the path. The four movements are performed without pause.

Earth opens the work with a sombre ostinato, rich in dark and unsettling colours (tom-toms, bass drum, tam-tam), which gradually becomes more intricate through the layering of additional motifs. Air introduces, for the first time, all four keyboard percussion instruments — glockenspiel, xylophone, vibraphone, and marimba — supported by the rest of the ensemble in a texture of ethereal transparency.

Water makes full use of the ensemble’s sonic palette, exploring a broad spectrum of timbres and delicate polyrhythms. It contrasts this complexity with a naïve, almost childlike “music box” effect created by the keyboards.

In Fire, a driving rhythmic ostinato underpins a motif based on the Fibonacci series — a pattern that expands and contracts (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 8, 5, 3, 2, 1) — and is taken up in canon across several instruments. These gradually fall silent, as if consumed by flames fading into ash.

This leads directly into the final section: a luminous culmination where the four keyboards once again take centre stage. A solemn theme emerges — at first shadowy and subdued, then increasingly radiant — over which fragments from previous movements are layered, evoking a final remembrance of the trials overcome. The piece concludes in a brilliant orchestral tutti, a ceremonial affirmation of transformation and transcendence.

Ceremonial was premiered at the Ars Musica Festival on 10 March 2013 in Studio 1 of Flagey (Brussels, Belgium) by the Sarah Mouradoglou Percussion Ensemble under the direction of the composer.