Just Tristan (2009) for any number of pianos

Materials

Duration: variable

Instrumentation:  any number of pianos (one pianist per piano). Solo piano, piano duo, or one hundred pianos are all possibilities.

About

Inspired by the tradition of open-form musical scores, I composed Just Tristan as a collection of fifteen chords, each a different voicing of pitches found in Wagner’s “Tristan” chord. The chords are visually linked on the score by arrows. In performance, pianists follow those arrows to jump from chord to chord and create a unique version of the piece.

I composed Just Tristan at the request of Akademie Schloss Solitude, for a concert celebrating the Akademie’s twentieth anniversary. My thanks to Schloss Solitude and to Jean-Baptiste Joly for supporting and nurturing my artistic and professional development as a composer.

Performance History

TheaterHaus Stuttgart, July 17, 2010, performed by Sven Thomas Kiebler and Elmar Schrammel.