Tom Coult’s Prelude (after Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe) receives its UK premiere from 12 Ensemble on 25 February at Wigmore Hall. The 5½-minute piece for lower strings is a reworking of the Prelude from the E minor suite for Viol by the celebrated 17th-century composer and violist Jean de Sainte-Colombe, whose life was dramatized by Alain Corneau in his 1991 film Tous les matins du monde.

Coult refracts the spare lines for solo viol through a dark-hued ensemble of five lower strings (2 violas, 2 cellos, and double bass): implied harmonies are made audible, new ones added, and everything is made thicker and richer. Coult’s melodic embellishments and decorations, as well as irregular rhythmic inflections, are used to capture, he says, “some of the liquid freedom that can lift music of this period off the page”. In May 2024 the Australian Chamber Orchestra and Richard Tognetti gave the Australian premiere of the piece, which was commissioned by Festival Musikdorf Ernen and premiered in 2022 as part of Coult’s residency there.

Coult has created several reworkings and elaborations of early music. These include After Lassus with soprano Anna Dennis - a 15½ -minute work that takes six duets from Lassus’ Novae aliquot (1577) and refashions them “like plasticine – reshaping, stretching and compressing them” – it was created as part of Coult’s  composer-in-association role with the BBC Philharmonic. For Daniel Pioro and the orchestra he also created versions of Vivaldi’s La Follia, Tartini’s Sonata No.2 in D minor, and Biber’s The Agony in the Garden from his Mystery Sonatas.

The most recent example is O Ecclesia for violin and electric guitar, after a chant by Hildegard von Bingen, which premiered at Kings Place with contemporary folk fiddle player Aidan O’Rourke and Sean Shibe. It receives further performances in March 2025 at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Howard Assembly Room, and LSO St. Luke’s. As with the Prelude, the material is freely adapted – stretched, compressed, and multiplied to fit its new clothing.