Carillon on 'Orientis Partibus"

Written in 1972/3 (Arthur gives both dates!), the piece is built upon the 12th-century French tune Orientis Partibus (“From the regions of the East”). Historically, this melody was central to the Festum Asinorum, or "Feast of the Ass" (an offshoot of the medieval Feast of Fools). Celebrated in January, the festival commemorated the flight into Egypt, honouring the donkey that carried Mary and Joseph. During the medieval liturgy, the congregation would playfully mimic the braying of a donkey at the end of each verse.
Wills translates the joy and chaotic energy of this historic festival into a jangling, virtuosic toccata. True to its title, the organ mimics a great carillon of swinging bells, layering shifting cross-rhythms and mildly dissonant harmonies over the medieval plainchant. The driving syncopation gives the work an almost jazzy, modern pulse while maintaining the unmistakable harmonic weight of the mid-20th-century French symphonic organ tradition. First recorded by the composer himself at Ely in 1976 (the first record on the rebuilt organ: https://youtu.be/lRNiTfaK50o?si=bGrsn4U_Prahzw1V ), it remains a brilliant, rhythmically electric postlude that balances medieval reverence with joyful eccentricity.