» Selected compositions    

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String Quartet No. 1: Midwinter Fantasy (1997)

Played by the Lydian String Quartet: Daniel Stepner and Judith Eissenberg, violins; Mary Ruth Ray, viola; Rhonda Rider, cello

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My String Quartet No. 1: Midwinter Fantasy is a piece in the tradition of Beethoven’s sixth (“Pastoral”) symphony—not programmatic in the sense of depicting actual events, but attempting to capture a certain range of moods or impressions. It is essentially a meditation on the changeable narrative of a New England winter: lowering clouds and biting wind, the sudden brilliance of sun on snowy roofs, the startling snap and shatter of a falling icicle. The quartet is in one continuous movement which divides roughly into four unequal sections, slow-fast-slow-fast.

Eleven Ostinato Variations (1999) for clarinet and piano

Played by Duo 101: Diane Heffner, clarinet; Megan Henderson, piano

 

Over the years, I have found myself increasingly drawn to the music of a number of Russian and east-European composers—Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, Leoš Janáček, Witold Lutosławski, György Kurtág, Galina Ustvolskaya, and Sofia Gubaidulina, among others—whose work often embodies a certain obsessive quality. Melodies, rhythmic patterns, particular sets of chords will appear over and over again, sometimes serving a clearly referential, structural purpose, sometimes giving the music an air of meditative or ebullient or playful improvisation. Eleven Ostinato Variations continues an exploration of ways a similar quality can work itself out in my own style.

 

The Italian word ostinato traditionally refers to a specific musical technique: the “obstinate” repetition of a figure (often a bass line); in this piece it refers more loosely to a general climate of recurrence or insistence on a few basic ideas, even as they are constantly being varied. How such a procedure might result in a work comprising eleven sections of widely ranging character will, I hope, become apparent.

Sonata (1991) for flute and piano

    I. Allegro deciso
    II. Variations
Played by Fenwick Smith, flute; Randall Hodgkinson, piano
 

 

My flute sonata is the result of a chance remark made by the renowned flutist Fenwick Smith. No doubt unaware of the danger of saying such things to a composer, he was lamenting the scarcity of “big” American flute pieces. I, of course, immediately decided to write one. Taking “big” to mean both “long” and “substantial,” I ended up with the present two movements, which run some fifteen minutes.

 

The first movement, Allegro deciso, is mostly fast and athletic. The slower central rubato section actually contains the climax of the movement, although this may not immediately be apparent given the violence to come later. The second movement is a theme and variations, with the theme presented largely as a single line in the piano. This movement divides into two main sections: the first four variations get slower and slower, threatening to come to a complete standstill partway through variation 4 (which is marked, not surprisingly, Immobile); variations 5 through 7 begin fast and get faster still, eventually dissolving into a frenetic cadenza. After this subsides, the piece comes to a close with an eighth variation that, in a passage for solo flute, echoes the theme.

Chorales and Intermezzi (1993) for piano

    Chorale I
    Intermezzo I: Andante cantabile
    Chorale II
    Intermezzo II: Con fuoco
    Chorale III
    Intermezzo III: Tempo rubato, con calore
    Chorale IV
    Intermezzo IV: Largo e misterioso—Doppio movimento—Tempo I
    Chorale V
    Chorale VI
    Intermezzo V: Molto vivo—Molto tranquillo—Tempo I
Played by Randall Hodgkinson, piano


Chorales and Intermezzi is a fairly large (eleven-movement) piano piece, comprising five intermezzos alternating with six chorales. The chorales serve a function much like that of the “Promenade” movements in Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, providing both an introduction to the piece and transitions between the larger musical units. (The idea of having intermezzos connected by smaller interstitial movements is not as paradoxical as it seems: the intermezzo as a piece has developed far beyond the implications of its name—think of late Brahms.) All five intermezzos are more or less loosely (sometimes very loosely) based on Beethoven’s Opus 126 bagatelles, which I admire greatly. His formal, thematic, or harmonic/ intervallic ideas are used as a springboard for new invention.