Twinkletoes was written in April/May 2025 for organ virtuoso James McVinnie, who gave the first performance during a recital in St Albans Cathedral on 3rd August that year. Its composition was triggered (I use the word in its correct metaphorical sense, not as currently misused) by a video James sent me of his feet performing - with spellbinding technical mastery - a flashy pedal-passage from my 1983 piece Riffraff. I was so struck by the economy and skill of his playing that I immediately started work on Twinkletoes, in which the feet - or (as the great Fats Waller called them in a clearly audible aside between verses of Your feet’s too big) the "peedal extremities" - are the fons et origo (as Jeeves would have put it) of the thematic material. Nothing like Jeeves for the mot juste . . .

Lasting between seven and eight minutes, Twinkletoes develops from a riff (or perhaps a raff) which is played on the peedals at the opening of the piece, and quickly comes out as a canonic trio sonata consisting of a theme and seven variations. The rhythm remains fairly constant (up until the last variation); but the thematic material is gradually varied and accrues more and more decorative detail. Each variation is more manic than the last, until the listener may fear for the physical and/or mental health of both performer and composer. Disaster is averted in the last variation, however, which is slow, calm, and heavily sedated. The handling - perhaps one should say the footling - of the peedal extremities is aerobically demanding. Physiologically, the ideal performer would probably be an orang-utan. However, in the absence of qualified and affordable orang-utangs and appropriate safeguarding measures, I have been forced to make do with the piece's excellent dedicatee, James McVinnie. He is currently the undisputed Twinkletoes King.

A blindingly obvious note on tempi: the structure (and performability) of Twinkletoes depends upon the gradual slowing of the pulse: each variation is fractionally slower than the one before, so that more time is allowed for accumulating detail. But metronome-marks should be treated as guide, rather than gospel: the size and acoustic of any space make a huge difference to performance tempo.

Giles Swayne 2025