Three Studies
Allen Brings
About this work:
As a composer who is also a pianist, I am aware of the temptation of allowing my fingers to do the composing rather than my head and my heart. As a result I rarely compose for my instrument unless it has been combined with either voice or other instruments. Each time I do compose for solo piano it is in response to a specific challenge that I have posed to be sure that what I am about to write will not sound like what I have already written. Many of the works written only for the left hand were written for pianists who had lost the use of their right hand. For others the reasons for their composition are not so apparent. My own reasons and also the reason I refer to the three pieces at the beginning of the program as “studies” were to learn how not to make the music sound as if is being played by only five fingers and, because there is a limit to how many notes can be played at one time, how to make each note significant. Three Studies then is a paradigm of every other piece on the program, in which nothing, whether pitch, rhythm, change in dynamic level (in loudness or softness), may be omitted or altered without injuring the music. The utmost care therefore was expended in determining not only pitches and rhythms but also exactly how long certain pitches would be heard simultaneously and how they were to be articulated at a particular dynamic level. While I was practicing these pieces in order to perform them for the recording, I discovered—not surprisingly—that I was approaching the music not as if it had been composed by myself but rather by Schumann, Chopin, or Bartók.
Score available from Mira Music Associates. Contact: miramusic@aol.com
Version: Piano, left-hand
Year composed: 2005
Duration: 00:07:38
Ensemble type: Keyboard:Unknown
Instrumentation: ,1 Piano soloist(s)
Instrumentation notes: For the left hand only although it can easily be played by both hands together