In the summer of 2008 I visited the cathedral in Coutances. The almost screeching voices of the guided tours just taking place when I arrived and the unspeakably drab music constantly coming from the loudspeakers everywhere dominated the sounds in the nave and thus the increasingly distracted view I had of the cathedral’s interior.
But suddenly the sound of the organ began: the guest organist for that evening’s recital was trying out parts of several compositions and their possible registrations. And all at once all distracting sounds vanished, the cathedral was transformed and came to life, its aura became palpable, and I experienced how, more than for other instruments, organ music can have a deep inner effect only in its sacred chosen place, and nowhere else.
I composed Triptychon (Triptych), with its three extremely contrasting sections, as an immediate reflex on the very same day. Above all the third and by far longest part represents in its extreme unobtrusiveness the experience of the link between the world that can be perceived by the senses and one’s own inner life – a state of hymn-like contemplation.
(Translation: Matthew G. Harris)