Cloches

^{Premiere: 19 October 2013 at Razzo Hall, Clark University, Worcester, MA. Brett Maguire, piano}

^{Duration: ca. 10′}

^{Instrumentation: solo piano}

^{Score: View score}

^{Performance note: Cloches draws on music I wrote for my now-withdrawn Wedding Preludes (2008). Ambitious though the earlier piece was, it proved fearsomely difficult to perform and was plagued by some immature compositional excesses.}

^{As its title suggests, each movement of Cloches is a study in bell-like sonorities. The first movement, Cloches de folie (“Bells of Insanity”) alternates two primary ideas: a trill-like figure that grows into an angular melody, and the chiming of bells. A nervous energy pervades the entire movement, though it is soon spent, its duration lasting barely a minute.}

^{The second movement, Cloches d’amour, takes its formal model from several movements of Ligeti’s first book of Etudes. In this movement, gently arpeggiated figures float up; are gradually anchored by weighty, chiming sonorities; and then dissipate again into the ether.}

^{The finale, Cloches de joie, features some of the most severe music I’ve yet written. Again, two primary ideas alternate: fiercely chiming bell-like chords and a Russian Orthodox chorale melody. At the zenith of the movement, both are heard simultaneously, before a cacophonous coda wraps up the piece in a haze of sound.}

^{Cloches is dedicated to my friend, the pianist Daria Scarano.}

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