A displaced Californian composer writes about music made for the long while & the world around that music. ~ The avant-garde is flexibility of mind. — John Cage ~ ...composition is only a very small thing, taken as a part of music as a whole, and it really shouldn't be separated from music making in general. — Douglas Leedy ~ My God, what has sound got to do with music! — Charles Ives
Monday, May 25, 2009
Playable
A recent post here about all-white note pieces sent me looking for a copy of Virgil Thomson's Sonata No. 3 for piano (1930), written for Gertrude Stein who like to improvise only on the white keys. As might be expected from Thomson, it's brief, witty, and wise, alternating between playing the naif and the wiseguy. The disfunctional harmonies and athematicism keep the (third, of four short movements) waltz, in particular, safe from any out-of-place sentimentality. That athematicism and all the right wrong notes make this very easy-to-play piece suitable for children and others with very short or very long attention spans.
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