Certain works for piano have deeply affected me and
my development as a composer: the Ligeti Etudes, the Ives Sonatas, and many of
the early Cowell pieces. I've also long been fascinated by many jazz pianists,
most notably Thelonius Monk, Marcus Roberts, and Keith Jarrett.
But at the same time that Sonata schizophrenically
connects to these varying styles of piano writing and playing, it is also
deeply concerned with new approaches to musical form. Each of the work's four
movements takes a different approach to building and transforming musical
material via a process. The first movement, "Transitions," is largely
based on a simple four-chord progression; pitches derived from this progression
are developed in imitative sections which gradually change harmonically and
texturally. The second movement, "Terzanelle," is based on the
interlocking rhyme scheme of the poetic form of the same name. The third
movement, "Recursion", creates a self-similar musical structure by
taking a simple idea (A B A C) and applying it at multiple different levels,
ranging from the entire movement's structure to the choices of individual
melodic notes. The final movement, "Syntax", uses an ordered set of
eight pitches and various transformations of it, but also returns to some of
the imitative techniques of the first movement.
The first movement, which was written for pianist
Aaron Epstein, may be performed as a separate work; it is five minutes thirty
seconds in duration.
Sonata received a 2000 ASCAP/Morton Gould Young Composer Award.