By the Road to Ephrath
Lynn Job
About this work:
Publisher: Buckthorn Music Press
Registered: ASCAP
Duration: 5:00 min.
Full Title: "By the Road to Ephrath - Rachel's Transfiguration" (2003)
NOTES: This amaro for solo organ refers to the sacred
reading Genesis 35: 18-19 {“As she breathed her last - for she was dying - she named her son Ben-Oni [Son of My Sorrow] . . . So Rachel died and was buried on the way to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem).” NIV}.
Far from a grievous dirge as the “amaro” [It. = grief, sadness] might imply, this sonata presents a lovely, life-affirming theme appropriate for a
woman so well-loved by the man Israel. The life crisis event in this story which signals the
turn toward her departing moves in the music from the low pedal through a short,
dramatic figural effect bisecting the work. The return of her lovely theme is now tangled,
embellished, conflicted with occasional pauses interrupting the life-flow and painting
moments of asystole. At the end, she slips away from us past the long, low pedal C
allowing the echoes of her presence to fade - delicate and poignant. This work was
commissioned and premiered (June 2004) by Carson Cooman in Rochester, New York.
Version: solo organ
Year composed: 2003
Duration: 00:05:00
Ensemble type: Keyboard:Organ
Instrumentation: ,1 Organ soloist(s)
Instrumentation notes: Some stops provided by Carson Cooman.