KCBOL - 1980

 KCBOL

During one of our lessons Ken showed or described to me a single-panel cartoon in which five parking meters, each a different height, stood in a row in order of size but for one, which one had a sign hanging from it: "out of order". I believe that the subject of our discussion was the perceived relative specificity of orderings of notes and other structures in music. The image has stuck with me, but at the time it became a structural motif for "KCBOL: A Minimal Extravaganza For Two Pianists". 

I wrote five piano pieces, each of different heft, from the smallest with just two notes, to the largest with over 200 notes. I asked a fellow student, Andrew Buchman, to assist in the performance. The stage was set with a piano in the middle, and a small table and chair in the bend, facing the audience. We entered, wearing matching tee-shirts with "KCBOL" blazoned upon them. I took my seat at the piano and Andrew at the table. The "program notes" and script are the graphics herein. The last diagram is how the blocks would look to the audience, in the same "mis-ordering" as the letters in the word BLOCK in "KCBOL". I also used that ordering, and possibly variations of it, for many of the internal figures and melodic contours throughout.

Of particular interest to me, later, were the largest "K" piece and the smallest "B". At a background level, the pitch material of K explores the notes making up a minor seventh chord (B, D, F-sharp, A) in ways that were similar to the procedure used in my later Intermezzos 1, 2, 3, and 4, (1981-1982) and is also a "one note at-a-time piece as Intermezzos 1 and 2 almost are. B, with its two notes, is echoed later in the fifth of my 5 Movements (1983), which also consists of 2 notes.

Performances

March 4, 1981 - Meany Studio Theater, University of Washington, Seattle - Andrew Buchman, Keith Eisenbrey

Recordings

March 4, 1981 - Andrew Buchman, Keith Eisenbrey

June 29, 2009 - Keith Eisenbrey

July 29, 2009 - Keith Eisenbrey

Keith Eisenbrey · KCBOL (090729) 801230

blogposts

July 5, 2017

"As cockamamie as the scheme was, there are many features of this 1980 piano piece that continue to be of use to me. As originally conceived there is a theater bit that goes with it, involving stacking alphabet blocks and ringing finger cymbals (which idea came back as whacking an oil drum at the beginning of Five Movements as performed at Bard in 1984). The original performers were Andrew Buchman and me. The midmost movement of the five is a two-note piece for piano four-hands."

Ken Benshoof - 1980

Sonata for Violin and Piano "Bryd one Brere" (1980)

Habitabit (1980)

Sonata 1980 (1980)

From Fall of 1977 to Spring of 1980 at the University of Washington I studied composition with Ken Benshoof. These compositions are among the last ones I worked on with him. I was pretty headstrong, and it would be another several years before much of what he tried to teach me had any effect. He gave me some advice about playing piano that I still find valuable every day. "Tell the whole story every time." He was a kind and thoughtful teacher and I am deeply grateful, both for the support he gave me at the time, and for the many wonderful conversations we have had over the years since.

your blogger ca. 1980, with what passes for a smile

I was taken by the early 14th English Century melody "Bryd one Brere" when it came up in a class on medieval music, and used it as a starting point for the showy Sonata for Violin and Piano "Bryd one Brere". I was attempting to write an idiomatic virtuoso violin part so I tried some splashy effects, such as left hand pizzicatos and multi-string glissandos. The piano part features a bunch of hand and arm clusters. My heroic violinist, Aloysia Friedmann (since gone on to great things) rose to the occasion magnificently. It's no great piece by a stretch but it's fun and makes me smile.

One of the many benefits of a large school of music is that one gets to know some phenomenal young musicians, such as Aloysia. At some point I also got to know Sue Walsh, a coloratura soprano with perfect pitch who was up for something different. Habitabit is a setting, in the Vulgate Latin, of the Peacable Kingdom passage from Isaiah ("The wolf shall dwell with the lamb . . ."). In an attempt to throw a bunch of wolves and lambs together in a pile I used, among other things, a strident ostinato bass rhythm, quotation (a Schubert dance), and called for extensive improvisation both from the pianist and the singer. It was an honest attempt, but something of a train wreck in the end. Its best moment is a long stretch repeating a loud juicily dissonant chord over and over with the dampers up. Sue sang wonderfully.

your blogger drinking ire

Sonata (1980) is a bit of a freak flag fly piece. It quotes (I was really into quoting) Nielsen's "Fifth Symphony", Cole Porter's "Let's Misbehave", and the "Dies Irae"; throws in a some twelve-tone-ish passages, loads of vigorous clusters and graphically notated clouds of scattered notes; and imitates a little music box that's winding down. Each of these features interrupts the others frequently, and are themselves interrupted by variously measured silent moments. The most interesting idea though was to use two different ways of measuring time - by breath (notated with brackets) and by meter (notated the usual way). Each different time system interrupts the other system. There are long stretches of nearly nothing happening except for a minor third tremolo. When I played it the next spring on the student composers' concert somebody, apparently, had had enough and walked out. I must admit I was rather pleased.

Performances:

Sonata for Violin and Piano "Bryd one Brere"

May 15, 1980 Brechemin Auditorium, University of Washington School of Music, Seattle

Aloysia Friedmann, violin; Keith Eisenbrey, piano

also 

June 13, 1980 home recording 

Habitabit

November 24, 1980 Studio Theater, Meany Hall, University of Washington, Seattle

Sue Walsh, soprano; Keith Eisenbrey, piano

Sonata 1980

May 13, 1981 Studio Theater, Meany Hall, University of Washington, Seattle

February 7, 2004 Music at the Edge of Space, University Temple United Methodist Church, Seattle

May 14, 2009 home recording

Keith Eisenbrey · Sonata 1980 (090514) 800511

June 6, 2009 Preludes in Seattle Part 3, Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Blog Posts:

February 13, 2011 - Sonata 1980 - Keith Eisenbrey (the recording of February 7, 2004 - no further comment)

March 1, 2011 - Sonata 1980 (the recording of June 6, 2009)

My live performance of June 6, 2009. The various species of pauses and interruptions are more clearly distinguished here than in my other performances, and I managed to refrain from rushing as much as I usually do. The Chapel piano sounds good.

June 7, 2011 - Sonata for violin and piano "Bryd one Brere"

Aloysia was a classmate of mine at the UW back in mumbletymumble, and she graciously agreed to play this little violin & piano piece. She has since gone on to great things and a wonderful career, as we all knew she would. The title comes from a 13th century English song that had come up as an example in a music history class. At the time my compositional method was to throw as many techniques as I could think of at the page and see which ones stuck. Use of quotations was one of them. The result in this case is kind of rollicking and showy. Aloysia negotiates my occasionally violinistic writing with pizazz. I do my best to keep up.

June 19, 2011 - Sonata for violin and piano "Bryd one Brere" (the recording of May 15, 1980 - no further comment)

July 14, 2011 - Sonata 1980 (the recording of May 13, 1981)

My live recording from May of 1981, at the Meany Studio Theater. The tape deteriorated some before I could rip it, but you can still hear the door opening for the guy who walked out on me.

July 24, 2011 - Sonata 1980 (the recording of May 14, 2009)

My recent studio recording.

December 30, 2012 - Habitabit

My 1980 Latin setting of the Peacable Kingdom passage from Isaiah. I was a student at the UW at the time and composed by hurling conceptual ideas at score paper to see what they would do. In this case I used quotations (a Schubert Waltz, I think), abrupt jump cuts between disparate textures, and directed improvisation, among other things. The whole thing ends up pretty much a mess, but my intrepid and phenomenally pitch-perfect soprano soldiered on admirably.

Fitting Room - 1979

Diapsalmata (1979)

Sonata 1979 (1979)

That year I was spending long hours in the library, both reading through scores and listening to recent and unfamiliar music. Among other items that caught my attention were the print book of scores and manuscript pages collected by John Cage called "Scores" and a multi-episode (and pretty darned complete) recorded survey of the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen through the early 70s. I found each of these to be fascinating, puzzling, and intellectually jolting. In response I spent the rest of my undergraduate career trying different modern music garments on for size.

blogger fishing sans hook

Diapsalmata, or Diapsalmata - 11 Preludes for Piano, consists of 11 short pieces, each focused on a different pitch class: G, C, D, F, A, B-flat, [], E-flat, B, A-flat, F-sharp, C-sharp. There was, I recall, a 12th prelude on E to fit in the blank spot, but either I skipped over it or didn't like it much and threw it out. New Music Features used include: proportionate notation of rhythm [I, VI, IX, X]; graphic gestural notation [III, VI, IX, X]; extreme registral displacement (or narrow out-of-center registral limitation) [I, II, III, IV, V, VII, VIII, XI]; and quotation of other music [XI], that other music being a little melody I liked (still do) from Scriabin's Fantaisie in A minor, W. 18, for two pianos (1892-1893). It is gratifying to me that it still holds together pretty well, and some of the detail is lovely - particularly the low register two-voice chorale of VIII.

I recollect that grumbling was heard among the faculty when I presented this at our weekly department seminar - though it would be tempting to make more of the grumbling than was actual, and I'm sure at the time I succumbed. I don't know whether Ken Benshoof, my teacher then, liked it or not, but we had some supportive conversations about it. I performed it in November of that year at the Winter Composers' Spotlight, and then the next May for the Brechemin Scholarship Auditions. Neal O'Doan, with whom I was studying piano, informed me that I had "scared" some of the piano faculty with my full arm fortissimo clusters. I admit the idea of being a teapot enfant terrible was heady, but probably more heady than was warranted for the size of the teapot.

Sonata 1979 was originally just Sonata, then the graphic Sonata - not as a title, but to distinguish it from the Sonata I wrote in 1980. I figured numbering them was weird, especially going back and renaming the first one First Sonata. In 2004 when I preformed both on the same recital I decided on my current naming scheme. I notice that IMSLP imposes their own numbering system, which is fine. The score eschews staff lines. The first part consists of proportionately notated stemless notes and pedal marks, relative durations being indicated by slurs. The second part is in graphic notation - squiggles and trills - followed by a short quasi-reprise of the first part. No precise pitches are indicated. The big accents on page 9 were originally intended to indicate "kick the pedal frame" but it could be any big noise. There are a couple of spots where a pedal release is marked fortississimo, which I have performed by sliding my foot off the pedal so it slams back up with a bang.

Ken grumbled some at this, not because it was graphically notated, but because he felt that it didn't engage that part of me that was getting quite good at composing how pitches might hang together. He was right, but I'm still fond of the idea of it, dragging it out of obscurity for recitals in 2004 and 2007. Prior to that time I had recorded a version in 1980 (Sonata, Sonata, Sonata) that dubs several performances on top of each other using a forgotten method that maximizes the cumulative loss of sound fidelity; and in May of 1986 Neal Kosály-Meyer and I used up the last 20 minutes or so of a cassette tape trading off performances (Readings of a Sonata). 

Performances:

Diapsalmata

November 28, 1979 - Student Composers Spotlight - Meany Studio Theater, University of Washington, Seattle

May 1, 1980 - Brechemin Auditions - Brechemin Auditorium, University of Washington School of Music, Seattle

February 23, 2002 - Continuity in Small Things - University Temple United Methodist Church, Seattle

March 17, 2007 - Preludes in Seattle, Part 2 - University Temple United Methodist Church, Seattle

also: 

February 7, 2007 - home recording

Sonata 1979

February 7, 2004 - Music at the Edge of Space - University Temple United Methodist Church, Seattle

October 13, 2007 - Sopranos - University Temple United Methodist Church, Seattle

also: 

June 14, 1980 - Sonata, Sonata, Sonata (several performances overdubbed) 

May 20, 1986 - Readings of a Sonata - Neal Kosály-Meyer and I trade performances until the tape runs out

Keith Eisenbrey · Readings of a Sonata (860520)

April 20 and 27, 2007 - home recordings

Blog Post (from Playlist of June 16, 2018):

June 7, 2018

Readings of a Sonata - Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Neal and I dink around with another old score of mine, Sonata 1979
We trade off readings to use up unused tape footage
We accomplish 3 full readings and the first part of a fourth

It's a graphic score so all the notes and rhythms are different, to varying degrees

sounds great, in that cruddy way we had, all the way

3 Strathspeys 1979

3 Strathspeys (1979)

3 Strathspeys were the first solo piano pieces I had composed since 2 Interruptions in 1976. I thought perhaps a set of dances, being short, would be a useful exercise. Something to work on while I came up with something to work on. I asked my friend Kathleen Ebneter if there were any kinds of folk dances that I could use that weren't already amply represented in the classical literature. She suggested strathspeys, and offered the information that they featured a "Scottish Snap," and that a typical rhythmic figure might be "short long | long short | long short | short long." Accurate or not, that was enough information to get me going. 

Note: if "short long" is one type (A), and  "long short" is another type (B), the formal type of the rhythm is ABBA (I had not heard of them). And if "short" is a type (A), and "long" is another type (B), then the whole consists of: ABBA BAAB. Interesting.

Banned Rehearsal with ABBA, Hollow Earth Radio, 2019

The first of them is the most old-fashioned of the lot. Set in A B A form, the 'A' music sticks closely to the rhythmic figure, developing it quite cleverly both melodically and rhythmically. I am especially fond of the interjectionary figure at the end of the fourth bar, which became the seed of the material in the 'B' music. That first 'A' section is in its own little A B A form, with its 'B' music being more gentle, lyrical and contrapuntal. The greater 'B' music grumbles along in the bass register, keeping itself tightly within the rhythmic scheme. The final 'A' music sneaks in over the top of the grumbling and gradually replaces it, has one bar all to itself, then winks out. some left over grumbling finishes it up. Even now, this piece feels composed.

Your blogger with hat 1978

The second, also in A B A form, starts with fortissimo doubled minor 9ths, like an impatient shouty drum. A tune full of skips follows, like a parody of the tune in the first, accompanied by a blatantly square staccato eighth-note pattern in the left hand. The tune forces its way into the upper register until the shouty drum puts a stop to it. It tries again, with some flashy ornaments, and the left hand figure skips a note every bar so that the whole offsets itself from the tune, but with identical response from the shouty drum. The 'B' music starts in the lower register and is another square eighth-note figure with strong accents on 2, 3 and 4. The right hand comes in, after 4 bars, in a canon offset by an eighth-note. Pianistically, this ends up feeling like rubbing one's head and patting one's tummy at the same time. Fun! The 'A' music returns, but is quickly (and more quietly) drummed out, the canonic figure of 'B' is alluded to, then BANG from the drum and done.

Your blogger with cat 1979

In the third Strathspey I start to tinker with it. The first measure is the first measure of the first Strathspey. Pause. Then a measure with only the first and third beats present. Pause. Then a measure with just the 'snaps' - beats one and four. Pause. Then just the snaps, but on beat four and one. I go "ta da!" during the pause. then just the snap on beat four. Then just beats two and four. I go again "ta da!" I sweep it all away bottom to top and hammer in the root rhythm,  but stretched over four measures way up on the highest D-natural. Then, quietly, just the snaps on beats | one four | one. A wisp of "ta . . ." and out.

Performances:

Studio Theater, Meany Hall, University of Washington: 

Student Composer Spotlight February 27, 1980

University Temple United Methodist Church, Seattle: 

October 25, 2002 (A Cat's Life Returns) 

June 10, 2006 (Preludes in Seattle)

Blog Post (from Playlist of January 12, 2019):

January 5, 2019

Three Strathspeys (1979) - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey [recorded live on June 10, 2006]

Something about these, my second-ever set of piano pieces, brought Rameau, whose keyboard music I have been sight-reading recently, to mind. Uncluttered textures, clear phrases, and most of all, exuberantly enjoyed sonorities in all the registers. The finals of the first two are a tad clever I suppose, but the third one holds its focus out to the bitter.

Delusions of Grandeur Part Two 1977-1979

Prelude for Clarinet and Piano (1977)

3 Kelly Songs (1978)

Concerto for Piano, Flute, and Strings (1978)

2 Poems (1978)

Variations on a Theme by Brahms (1978)

Symphony (1979)

3 brothers: Paul (L) and Glen (R), your blogger seated

I wrote Prelude for Clarinet and Piano in the spring of 1977 for my brother Paul, who was at Washington State University studying clarinet. It features a three-note melodic motif (E, F, D) that I drove relentlessly (using various transpositions, transformations, permutations, and prolongations) into the ground. In 1979 he performed it on his Senior Recital and I have been told that a copy of the score resides quietly in the WSU music library. I was unable to be there, but have a recording.

In my first year at the University of Washington I met Ken Jaffe, a fellow student who commuted to school with me on the same bus. He was a counter-tenor with perfect pitch, and I wrote him three short songs on verses by Walt Kelly: "One Small Score for Two Brown Eyes," "For Lewis Carroll and the Children," and "A Summer Song to a Winter Tune." Ken and I performed them at a Student Composer Concert at the UW in May of 1979. I computer-engraved the first two of them, but apparently not the third. The complete score is probably buried deep in a drawer somewhere. Permission to use the texts was neither sought nor granted.

beard o' wisp

In order to be a famous composer pianist I needed a to compose a Piano Concerto. I was struggling considerably at the time with what is popularly known as "finding one's voice." From this end the problem is mostly one of shedding all the dreamy ideas about what kind of composer one aspires to be, but at the time it seemed mostly a question of how to put one note after another so that it sounded like music. After at least one major revision this was performed in November of 1979, featuring my friend Dean Williamson on piano, Ellen Berkowitz on flute, with the Thalia Chamber Symphony, under my baton. Much of it is rather murky, some of it is rhythmic and fun. Each soloist gets a cadenza.

2 Poems consist of an Elegy and an Epigraph for solo cello. A fellow student was kind enough to perform them at one of our weekly composer's seminars. There is a slow one and a fast one.

Each variation of my Brahms Variations focuses on a different orchestral group - strings, brass, winds, like that. The University of Washington Orchestra read through this once, doing a better job than it deserved. The Theme is a Sarabande for piano that Brahms ended up re-tooling as part of an early chamber piece - one of the piano trios if I am not, though I often am, mistaken.

with mountains and hat

I was determined to write a symphony when I was 19. I had read that Shostakovich had done so, and possibly others. Mustn't fall behind! I managed to finish the score the day before I turned 20. It has some moments, notably a fugal bit that could have gone somewhere, and a french horn tune that needed more work. There is a grand design but it hardly matters. A couple of years later the Seattle Symphony provided six of us composition students with a rehearsal and a concert of our pieces, conducted by Michel Singher. It was my senior year and I was fortunate to be included. A local television station, looking for a human interest story, sent a camera crew and reporter to interview one of us. Due to the timing of their visit (during rehearsals) I happened to be the one they interviewed, though not, as I recall, the one they had hoped to. This is the only time I have appeared on television. I surreptitiously recorded the concert, hauling a full size cassette deck up to the balcony in a suitcase. Very sneaky.

Music in School 1965-1977

your blogger on Mt. Pilchuck ca. 1976

I started playing drums in 5th Grade, under the tutelage of "Red" Eickhoff, the band teacher at Phantom Lake Elementary School. I could read music and knew how to practice so I moved quickly up the ranks, or "chairs" as they were called. And since I knew how to watch the director I was tasked with playing bass drum, starring as the eponymous "Mr. Boom Boom" in an early concert. I must have started private drum lessons at about that time. My mom was a musician and that is what one did. I remember a series of private drum teachers (whose names are forgotten) who had little studios in the back caverns of various local music stores, teaching rudiments and sticking technique - and eventually "drum set." Soon I was taking on younger students of my own. At some point I started taking orchestral percussion lessons from an older peer, Cameron MacIntosh. He introduced me to the mysteries of mallets, and that there are many ways to strike a triangle and operate a tambourine.

At Tillicum the band teacher was William Wicker, a jack-of-all-reeds who would regale us with stories of playing for the circus when they would come to town. I don't remember whether I started also playing in the orchestra right away in 7th Grade but it is likely. Marsha (sp?) McElvain was the instructor. One year we entered a student orchestra contest in Gresham, OR, and walked away with 1st Place in our division, beating out our feared cross-town rivals at Odle Junior High, who had won the year before. The trophy we brought back was easily 3 times the size of any of the trophies (all sports) in the case. Miss McElvain was quite pleased.

drawing by Paul Eisenbrey, 1977

At Sammamish High School I was in band (Gary Walker, director) for perhaps a year, perhaps just one semester, opting quickly for orchestra as being more amenable to my personality and schedule - we had been required to play in Pep Band for the first football game, at which I caught walking pneumonia and was out for three weeks. The orchestra and the ensembles were led by Norm Poulshock, who gave me several wonderful opportunities to show off in public (spooky xylophone solos and the like) - and even let me take the school's marimba home one summer to practice. There was a music theory class in those more enlightened times, led by Jack Halm (who also ran the choral program). It was as an assignment in his class that I wrote "Prelude for String Quartet." With my dad's help I even convinced the powers that be to count this music theory class as an "Occupational Ed" credit.

Columbia River

Among my peers during those years I remember Kathleen Ebneter (a guitarist, singer, and huge Sandy Denny fan who tried to introduce me to folk music, and who later went into Astronomy), the remarkably talented violist Karie Prescott (whom I escorted to see Götterdämerung when Seattle Opera first produced it - talk about your first dates!), the cellist sisters Anne and Meg Brennand, (all of whom are, I believe, still active professionally), cellist Larry Chu (went into medicine), my piano duet partner Dean Williamson (from whom I quickly learned that I was not the greatest pianist since sliced bread and who is now an esteemed Opera Director), my good friend in the Thalia percussion section Julia Calhoun (sadly lost track of), and a host of others. At various local piano competitions I was often placed in the same pool of contestants as Christopher Mehrens. For some reason my piano teacher seemed to think we were rivals for something, but when he appeared in my first theory class at the University of Washington we ended up hanging around together quite a lot, He provided invaluable assistance during the realization of my big synclavier work "AKU."

your blogger on Mt. Adams, 1977

Delusions of Grandeur Part One 1975-1977

String Quartet #1 (1976)

Music for Orchestra (1977)

Variations, Fugue, and Dance (1977)

String Quartet #2 (1977)

Chamber Suite (1977)

blogger without hat

I became aware of Scriabin at about the same time I started composing. These are some factoids I found intriguing that might be more or less true:
1. He was about my (then) age when he started writing music,
2. he was 19 when he composed his first Symphony,
3. he was a brilliant pianist (better than Rachmaninoff per the rumors) known for subtle use of the damper pedal, and
4. he invented a completely new harmony "based on 4ths."  Oh, and
5. there was something about sex that was never quite explained.
A heady mix for a young nerd. I figured if I was going to keep up I had best get started.

I started by trying to invent a new harmonic system. 4ths had been used so I decided tritones were my ticket to fame and glory. My first string quartet uses bunches of them in parallel double stops. What I discovered is that I had no understanding of how a harmonic system might be constructed in the first place. Looking back at it now, it is ambitious, showy, energetic, and quite good practice at writing notes in an open score format.

For my next trick I tried a big orchestra piece. Music for Orchestra is scored for piccolo, flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 french horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, xylophone, chimes (tubular bells), snare drum, timpani, and the usual army of strings. It has some ideas pasted onto a set of orchestral builds. It starts and ends with chimes and long held string unisons.

blogger with hat

For Variations, Fugue, and Dance, saving only the timpani, I traded all the spare percussion for a 3rd french horn. This time all those ideas are thrown into a more tightly held set of structures. This is
1. my first set of variations,
2. my first fugue, and
3. my first dance.
Humble beginnings indeed. Many moments are cribbed from Shostakovich. This score actually got a read-through at orchestra camp that summer. My co-campers were brave and I thank them.

Orchestra music has a lot of notes, hand inking big scores was time consuming, and making all those copies was expensive. I think I even copied out all the parts. Oof, back to quartets. If SQ #1 was all marcato aggression and cool impressionism, SQ #2 does a splashy cannonball into expressionistic teen angst. Some of the melodic ideas were derived from names of people - though rather than matching letter names in the name to the letter names of the notes I mapped each letter to its place within a 26 semi-tone pitch span, then spelled the name in pitches. I had heard of Schoenberg's tone rows by that time and probably inflicted some operations on my tunes. I finished this piece while working with Ken Benshoof at the University of Washington, though I think it was pretty much complete by then. It was the first piece of mine performed at the UW, in what was then the Studio Theater, downstairs at Meany Hall.

blogger on the beach

For the Summer of 1977 Dell Wade was putting together a chamber concert - he was always putting something together - and my assignment was to write a piece for it. Chamber Suite is for wind quintet and string quartet plus double bass. I didn't know what Suites were made of so I looked at several. Well, maybe I looked at one. There is a Prelude, an Allemande, a Courante, a Sarabande, an Air, and a Gigue. It must have been one of Bach's that I looked at. I didn't have any experience of what those sorts of dances were, so I stuck close to the model. The Air is the only one that isn't similar at all to what an Air is in Bach. This piece worked pretty well in performance, in the sense that it clearly sounds like music, the orchestration works reasonably well (nothing fancy), it doesn't overstay its welcome (much), and it doesn't get all weepy.