On 21 November Tom Coult’s O Ecclesia, a reimagining of a chant by Hildegard von Bingen, appears at the GAIA Festival in Thun. The 8 ½-minute piece for solo violin and strings – accompanied in this performance by quintet – is programmed alongside music by Takemitsu, Caroline Shaw, Ravel, Chopin, and Daft Punk.
O Ecclesia is based on a chant by Hildegard. This material is presented in full, though very freely adapted – stretched, compressed, and multiplied to fit its new clothing. The violinist intones Hildegard’s melody, while the strings provide soft halos of sound to surround its lyrical line. The piece premiered with the BBC Philharmonic and Daniel Pioro in 2021, as part of Coult’s composer-in-association role with the orchestra. It also appeared at The Bridge Festival in 2022 with Jonathan Morton as soloist alongside players from Trondheim Soloists, Scottish Ensemble, and Ensemble Resonanz.
It made its Swiss debut with Daniel Bard as part of Coult’s tenure as Composer-in-Residence at Musikdorf Ernen in the summer of 2022. Coult has since reworked the piece for several configurations, including a version for violin and organ that featured on Daniel Pioro’s album Saint Boy (released on Platoon), a version for violin and choir, premiered by Pioro and the Marian Consort at the 2024 Aldeburgh Festival, and, most recently, for the electric guitar of Sean Shibe and fiddle of Aidan O’Rourke, which debuted and toured in December 2025 at Kings Place.
Coult has created several reworkings and elaborations of Baroque and Renaissance repertoire. Coult’s Prelude (after Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe) is a 5½-minute piece for lower strings that reimagines 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; in February 2025 it received its UK premiere from 12 Ensemble at Wigmore Hall – listen here – and has also appeared with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and Scottish Ensemble, and will appear with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in April 2026.
Other works in this vein include After Lassus, which premiered in April 2023 with the BBC Philharmonic and 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”. For Daniel Pioro he also previously created versions of Vivaldi’s La Follia – performed recently by Pioro and Manchester Camerata – Tartini’s Sonata No.2 in D minor, and Biber’s The Agony in the Garden from his Mystery Sonatas.