Official website of Thierry Escaich, composer and organist

 

Évocation III

2008

Organ

5 mn

• World premiere: 27/09/2008, Cathedral, Graz (Austria) – finalists of the Graz International Organ Competition.

• Publisher: Alphonse Leduc.

 

Composed in 2008 for the final round of the International Organ Competition in Graz, Austria, Évocation III paraphrases the chorale Nun komm der Heiden Heiland. The chorale is equally well-represented in the Protestant hymn tradition as in Catholic Gregorian chant [as the melody is based on the Advent hymn Veni redemptor gentium]. If my first Évocation thrived on reminiscences of baroque music and oriental melismas and the second structured itself on the idea of an obsessive ritual punctuated by fragments of musical personalities scattered like an expressionistic stained-glass window, my third Évocation explores the world of echoes and of canons in all forms. From the beginning of the composition, the chorale phrases, exposed with the flexibility of Gregorian melodies, seem to become entangled; whirling in a kind of echo chamber. These are more crisscrossing, sonorous layers than counterpoint. This resonant, and slightly evanescent, ambiance will later be reprised and orchestrated in Psalmos, my Symphonie Concertante, composed in 2016 for the Cincinnati Orchestra. The central section of the Évocation, more agitated, feverish, sees these compact dialogues between manuals accentuated. The writing, in a myriad of echoes, reaches a climax before subsiding in a harmonically-colored and more serene coda, finally attaining the suspenseful ending.