Sonata Liebeslied, 24 Preludes, Isaiah 60:1-5 2010-2011

Karen at Mt. Rainier National Park

Tracing the beginnings of my 2010 Sonata Liebeslied takes us back to my composition lessons with John Rahn at the University of Washington during the 1980/81 academic year. At some point the score to Ben Boretz's ("...my chart shines high where the blue milks upset...") was open on the piano in his studio. I had been showing John the opening movement of my then recent KCBOL, which is texturally slow and thin, and he thought I might be interested in Ben's slow and thin work of a few years prior. I was immediately taken with it in a way no piece before or since has accomplished. Fast forward a few years and, as I was preparing to return back to Seattle from my studies with Ben, he gave me the original pencil score to Liebeslied, for a pianist alone, which he characterized as an unfinished piece that he had been  working on when he had a better idea, which better idea was the above mentioned ("...my chart shines high where the blue milks upset..."). 

When I got back to Seattle one of the first things I did was to make a fair copy of it in ink, partially for ease of reading, but also as a way of getting to know it. I worked it up and played it several times over the years, in the face of Ben's ambivalence about it as a piece. Those reservations notwithstanding I found it to be personally instructive as to my piano playing - every time I picked it up I found myself needing to play better in order to play it how I heard it. 

At some point Ben suggested that I recompose it. My first response, largely cosmetic, was Liebeslied (amended) of 2006. But then I had my own better idea. I started with Ben's opening gesture, spreading its pitches out rhythmically into a short lyrical figure which I then proceeded to remorph through a series of bespoke mod-17 transformations, layering different strands of the resulting figures, one over the other, across a spacious time span. The result varies from spare to densely collisive , and even manages to map, loosely, aspects of the figurational surface of Ben's original Liebeslied. I'm quite pleased with it as a piece, but as a thing for me to play it's fiendish - just barely within my capabilities. I performed it several times while I had it under my fingers. At one recital, attended by Ben, I presented it in conjunction with both Liebeslied (amended) and ("...my chart shines high where the blue milks upset...").

your blogger at Mt. Rainier National Park

All the while the multi-recital survey I had undertaken of the Prelude cycles Lockrem Johnson, Greg Short, and Ken Benshoof got me to thinking about what such a cycle of my own might be like, especially as I hadn't composed music in such an intentionally tonal idiom for what seemed like ages. My models were, of course not just those of my older contemporaries, but also the cycles of Chopin and Scriabin. In the midst of working on them I came to a working theory concerning the perennial question of what all those preludes were preludes of, that is, what do all those preludes precede? Essentially this working theory comes down to thinking of them as preludes to their own tonal completion - they precede that particular tonality which they elucidate in themselves. 

I began by making a series of quick sketches, one for each key. They were little more than a figuration thought and a path to a cadence. I then proceeded to flesh them out, and occasionally, prune them back, until I had completed the whole bunch. the finished set contains almost no extensive pieces (such as Chopin's and Greg Short's sets do), the longest of mine fitting comfortably on two pages. They work pretty well as a thing to play all together. About 10 years later, as I was working them up to record, I made some revisions - mostly removing my original pedal instructions in favor of "pedal ad lib", but also making more significant changes to the G-sharp minor prelude to help it flow. 

In other business I finished up the Extracts project, discussed in the previous chapter, and in 2011 I wrote a setting of Isaiah 60:1-5, for voice and piano, adjusting the language of the King James Version for inclusivity. Gradus and Banned Rehearsal carried on as before, the big news being that Aaron started back up with us after his long sabbatical. I gave one recital in June of 2010, at which I played Richard Johnson's Keyboard Shortcuts, Sean Osborn's Theme and Three Variations, Brian Cobb's Dear S., Liebeslied (Amended) by Ben as modified by me; Ben's ("...my chart shines high where the blue milks upset..."), and my Sonata Liebeslied.

Banned Playout:

2010:

Numbered 770-783 07:08:46
Assembly Rechoired (two sessions) 01:30:25
Peripheral (9 sessions) 01:48:18

Total 2010: 10:27:29

2011:

Numbered 784-804 11:46:05
Assembly Rechoired (one session) 00:42:23

Total 2011: 12:28:28

Grand Total: 781:55:57

Scores:

Sonata Liebeslied
24 Preludes
Isaiah 60:1-5

Recordings:

Sonata Liebeslied

24 Preludes