Charlie Williams, piano.
Recorded live at the 3Arts Club of Chicago on January 20, 2003.
6 min., 7 MB.
aphorisms, book I:
1. Alban and György / t = ca. 100 / objective, precise
2. Expectation / t = ca. 80 / placid, flexible
3. Dream-music / t = ca. 150 / mysterious, fleeting
4. Reminiscence / t = ca. 60 / wistful, sonorous
5. Diabolique / t = ca. 200 / aggressive, sinister
6. Blur / t = ca. 40 / ethereal, hazy
aphorisms is a set of six short piano pieces written in the spirit of Bartok's Mikrokosmos and Schoenberg's Six Little Piano Pieces, Op. 19.
The set borrows its disposition of movements from Alban Berg's Lyric Suite. Following Berg's model there are three pieces that grow gradually faster in tempo and more assertive in character, alternating with three pieces that grow gradually slower in tempo and more relaxed in character.
Other references to the Lyric Suite by can be heard at the opening, where the suite's opening pitches are put through block construction methods reminiscent of György Ligeti's Musica Ricercare. The third piece again pays homage to Berg in its palindromic structure, and the fifth piece quotes briefly from the Trio Tenenbroso of his Presto Delierando.
The slow pieces do not make reference to the Lyric Suite, but do make reference to each other in the gradual progression from "Expectations" to "Reminiscence", ending eventually in "Blur".
Derek Johnson is a doctoral student at Indiana University and recipient of the Kate and Cole Porter Memorial Fellowship. A native of Boulder, Colorado, he began musical studies at the piano at age seven, and guitar at age 10. He began college study as a jazz guitarist at Columbia College in Chicago, but quickly turned to composition, receiving a BA at Columbia (1998) and an MA at Indiana (2001). He is a student of David Dzubay and Don Freund.
Program note and biography by the composer