The following note by the composer is reprinted from the recording of this concerto on the Catalyst label.

The Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra Veni, Veni, Emmanuel was first performed on August 10, 1992, at London's Royal Albert Hall, with Evelyn Glennie, soloist, and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Jukka-Pekka Saraste. Commissioned by Christian Salvesen PLC for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Veni, Veni, Emmanuel is in one continuous movement. Dedicated to my parents, it is based on the Advent plainsong of the same name and was started on the 1st Sunday of Advent 1991 and completed on Easter Sunday 1992. These two liturgical dates are important, as will be explained below. On one level the work is purely abstract, in that all the musical material is drawn from the 15th-century French Advent plainchant. On another level it is a musical exploration of the theology behind the Advent message.

In the work soloist and orchestra converse as two equal partners, using a wide range of percussion instruments, covering tuned, untuned, skin, metal, and wood sounds.  Much of the music is fast and, although seamless, can be divided into a five-sectioned arch. It begins with a bold, fanfare-like “overture” in which the soloist presents all the instrument types used throughout. When the soloist moves to gongs and unpitched metal and wood the music melts into the main meat of the first section – music of a more brittle, knotty quality, propelled forward by various pulse rates evoking an ever-changing heartbeat.

Advanced by drums and carried through a metrical modulation*, the music is thrown forward into the second section, which is characterized by fast “hocketing” of chords between one side of the orchestra and the other. Eventually the music winds down to a slow central section which pits cadenza-like expressivity on the marimba against a floating tranquillity in the orchestra, which hardly ever rises above ppp. Over and over again the orchestra repeats the four chords that accompany the words “Gaude, Gaude” from the plainsong's refrain. They are layered in different instrumental combinations and in different speeds, evoking a huge, distant congregation murmuring a calm prayer in many voices.

A huge pedal crescendo in E flat provides a transition to section four, in which material from the “hocket” section is reintroduced under a virtuoso vibraphone solo. Gradually one becomes aware of the original tune floating slowly behind all the surface activity. The climax of the work presents the plainsong as a chorale followed by the opening fanfares, providing a backdrop for an energetic drum cadenza. In the final coda the all-pervasive heartbeats are emphatically pounded out on drums and timpani as the music reaches an unexpected conclusion.

The heartbeats that permeate the whole piece offer a clue to the human presence of Christ. Advent texts proclaim the promised day of liberation from fear, anguish, and oppression, and this work is an attempt to mirror this in music, finding its initial inspiration in Luke 21:

There will be signs in the sun and in the moon and among the stars; on earth nations in agony, bewildered by the clamour of the ocean and its waves; men dying of fear as they await what menaces the worlds, for the powers of heaven will be shaken. And they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. When these things begin to take place, stand erect, hold your heads high, because your liberation is near at hand.

At the very end of the piece the music takes a liturgical detour from Advent to Easter -right into the Gloria of the Easter Vigil in fact – as if the proclamation of liberation finds embodiment in the Risen Christ.

* “Metrical modulations” are tempo changes expressed in mathematical ratios; for instance, the eighth-note in the old tempo can become an eighth-note triplet in the new tempo, or vice versa. The concept was first introduced by Elliott Carter.