3 Diatonic Studies – Piano

Description

1. Chasing Golberg (2004)Chasing Goldberg was written in response to a commission to compose a variation based on the Aria of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Each measure employs pitch classes from the equivalent measure in the Bach. Instead of straight binary repeats, each repeat is a canon on the original statement.2. Cyclic Descent (2009)Cyclic Descent juxtaposes the diatonic set with its pentatonic complement and follows diatonic sequences at multiple structural levels, successively transposed down a scale step. Contrasting ideas gradually merge, and by a circuitous route the music ends up where it began.3. Scalar Rhythms (2009)Scalar Rhythms is built on a parallel between scales and rhythms. If you count up the major diatonic scale in semitones, the pattern is 2-2-1-2-2-2-1. Similarly, the pattern for the pentatonic scale is 2-2-3-2-3; for the major triad it is 4-3-5. West African drumming often employs these asymmetrical patterns as durational values. Scalar Rhythms is constructed entirely, and in canonic fashion, from these isomorphisms between scales and rhythms.