Water Bubbling

Several motifs from the "Water Music" appear in this work, which seems to illustrate many water "features", not just bubbling, but flowing, cascading, freezing, evaporating, drenching … The music is one of eight brand new works selected from the 98 international entries to the Handel-Inspired Composition Competition, played on the 1998 chamber organ (one manual, no pedals) by Goetze and Gwynn, a reproduction of a mid-eighteenth-century instrument owned by Charles Jennens ("librettist" of Messiah), commissioned by the Handel House Museum. —Paul Ayres

Eighteenth-century keyboard arrangements of the Air and Bourrée from the Water Music, are followed by a splendidly inventive piece by the Japanese composer Satoru Ikeda in his 'Water Bubbling'. This is, as Paul Ayres notes, full of watery 'effects'. It well deserves to find a place in recital programmes. —Glyn Pursglove

One beautiful use of the chamber organ comes from the Japanese composer Satoru Ikeda, whose quasi-minimalist Water Bubbling makes clever use of … —Oxford Academic

"Water Bubbling", dedicated to the organist Paul Ayres, is found on CD: "Handel-Inspired" PRIORY [PRCD 894] (Paul Ayres, organ)

First performances:

April 18, 2007

St George's Church Hanover Square, London

May 14, 2007

St. Pancras Parish Church (at the London Festival of Contemporary Church Music: new music for chamber organ, inspired by Handel)

September 19, 2007

All Saints' Parish Church, Hertford (music by Bach and Handel, with new pieces inspired by these masters of the High Baroque)