John McCabe: Esperanza for Organ

Commissioned for the 26th International Organ Festival at St Albans 2011 and funded by the RVW Trust.Duration: 7.45Performance notesRegistration: the performer is free to determine the entire registration scheme except at bar 60 where a solo reed is mandatory.Pitch: manual passages at bars 25, 32, 38 are written for a solo 4' stop (s). The Pedal is at 16' (ad lib 32') unless otherwise indicated (bars 31, 37 where a solo 8' is required).III - Sw.II - Gt.I - Pos/ChComposer's noteEsperanza is named after Camp Esperanza (Camp Hope), the location of the mission to rescue the thirty-three miners trapped underground for seventy days in 2010 at the San Jose Mine in Chile, a rescue that was televised live and was one of the most moving, and inspiring, things I have ever seen. By the most extraordinary coincidence, I had already done a good deal of sketching for this Organ piece before this all happened and had determined on a 'darkness-to-light' kind of piece - so the coincidence, as well as my feelings of elation, were both too strong to ignore.The piece persues a course from a fairly knotty slow beginning (heralded by a few chords that recur at the very end), full of rising themes (another coincidence - the material had already been sketched before the miners were trapped underground), and reaching a loud climax, the quick, toccata-like second section bursting vigourously out of the tension which is created at the beginning of the work.

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