Overlapping Backgrounds (1998) for piano

This piece, the final submission for my M.Mus. in Composition in Edinburgh, is based on two simultaneous grounds of unequal length, used in Passacaglia fashion. They are taken respectively from the final movements of Ligeti’s Horn Trio (25 quavers long) and Brahms’s Fourth Symphony (72 semiquavers long). Their unequal length creates a rotating series of harmonic backgrounds (in a quasi-Schenkerian sense) upon which simultaneous variations are composed. The variations begin with a rhythmic accelerando, as is typical in Baroque and Classical variations. At one time, we are reminded of Bach's solo violin Chaconne. Later variations explore different textures, such as chords, polyrhythms, contrasts and combinations between the different registers of the piano, clusters, silently depressed keys, unisons, virtuoso passages a la Liszt, fast parallel chords rising and falling along the whole range of the piano, leading to a climax characterized by hammered repeated chords. The long coda, beginning like a transformed recapitulation, explores the same material from different standpoints. In one section, in particular, the notes of the two ostinati enter one by one, gradually increasing the thickness of the texture and decreasing it again. The ending is rather dramatic, ending with a cluster that encompasses all the notes between E and G more than an octave apart.

This work was the final submission for my M.Mus. in Composition at the University of Edinburgh in 1998, for which I was awarded a distinction.