Already in his first work for solo organ, the final Fantasia section of the Christmas cycle O Magnum Mysterium (1960), Peter Maxwell Davies had demonstrated considerable idiomatic finesse writing for an instrument at which he did not count himself an expert. Likewise, the Three Organ Voluntaries from 1976 exhibit some of Davies' most thoughtful and balanced music, albeit within a rather confined space. By the time he arrived at his Sonata for Organ from 1982, however, Davies seems to have absorbed the sounds and explored the possibilities of the organ to a such a degree that the music stretches and arcs into the kinds of broad gestures found elsewhere in his oeuvre, fully exploiting the timbral and textural resources of the instrument.

As do many of Davies' works, this one draws its initial creative germ from music history. The basis of the piece is a fragment of chant taken from the Lamentations of Jeremiah listed in the Liber Usualis as part of the Matins for Maundy Thursday (leading up to Good Friday). In fact, the opening movement comprises little more than a decorated statement of the chant material, a single winding line of music initiated monophonically then rendered with intermittent harmony against a chromatic ascending bass line. The whole movement lasts under a minute, providing only a brief and blurry glimpse of the liturgical source material. The second movement likewise occupies a small temporal space, ending rather abruptly after two minutes. A stark and transparent elaboration in four voices, its lines seem connected only tenuously, like figures being simultaneously etched on opposite walls of the same large room. The third movement greatly overshadows its predecessors both with its dramatic scope and its length (nearly 14 minutes). As its musical shapes come into focus, a distinctive motive emerges made of a dissonant note pair that suddenly leaps downward. This angular idea gradually evolves and gathers inertia above a series of thick, subterranean harmonies. The melodic transformations become more involved, stratifying into multiple layers of prose, punctuation, commentary, and dialogue, until the full forces of the instrument are combined into an enormous block of sound. This suddenly recedes into a subdued, pulsing texture over which a single solo voice intones a slow and plaintive melody. This too begins to expand, however, until the organ once again seems to approach its critical mass. The sheer weight of the movement's culmination seems to topple it over into the wildly virtuosic Toccata, which serves as the fourth and final movement. Over the course of nine minutes, the performer executes a dizzying array of keyboard acrobatics: a ponderous melody played on one manual is shot right through by a plunging scale played on another; shrill hymns project above a meandering bass and a thick polyphonic middle ground; rising and falling arpeggios take jarring harmonic detours without losing a beat. A final climax slowly dissipates, leaving only a low D drone.

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