About this work:
Upon hearing about Rebecca Pechefsky's upcoming solo harpsichord recital debut at Carnegie's Weill Recital Hall on May 22, 2002, my first comment after being thrilled and congratulatory was "Is she playing any new music?" So, when the response was, "Only if you write something," how could I say no!
I've known Rebecca for more than 20 years and we've been engaged in a constant musical dialog from day one. In 1994, when I composed a song cycle based on the poetry of e.e. cummings for solo male voice and could not decide if the accompaniment should be solo piano or guitar trio, it was Rebecca who convinced me that I had actually already composed the work idiomatically for harpsichord and it is that way that if by yes was premiered (by her) and lives to this day. The following year, when I composed another song cycle based on poetry by Margaret Atwood for female voice and an ensemble including toy piano, it was Rebecca once again who was involved in the premiere, adding the perfect touch on the toy piano, a delicate instrument which is actually served better by the technique of a harpsichordist than the technique of pianists who are usually found playing the instrument.
So, my latest work brought to life by Rebecca, is actually largely inspired by the history of our ongoing musical collaboration. The title, is 5, which happens also to be the name of e.e. cummings' 1926 poetry collection, seemed inevitable given our past cummings attachment and the fact that her Carnegie program would also include a performance of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 5. And the title determined many parameters of the piece, which lasts five minutes, is in quintuple meter throughout, and is based on a series of transpositions between five different types of pentatonic scales, containing all 12 chromatic pitches, my more than modest response to sharing a program with the composer of the Well-Tempered Clavier:
E G# A B D# (E)
(4) (1) (2) (4) (1)
C E F G Bb (C)
(3) (1) (2) (3) (2)
A B C# E G (A)
(2) (2) (3) (3) (2)
B D E F# A (B)
(3) (2) (2) (3) (2)
F A B C E (F)
(4) (2) (1) (4) (1)
A total of ten harmonic areas are traversed during the course of is 5, each governed exclusively by the pitches of one of these pentatonic scales, which are determined by the possible pitch content (but not the pitch order) of the name "rEBECCA pEChEFsky"; this music is, after all, a gift to Rebecca! While Bach and fellow German-speakers considered the letter "H" viable for musical interpretation, I have not since, alas, I am not Bach as will become abundantly clear when my music is presented alongside his… Rather, like most of the music I have written in the last few years, it is music that attempts to reconcile the aesthetics of minimalism and serialism. But, since no two measures herein are identical and there isn't a single 12-tone row, strict adherents to either style will probably not be reconciled.
After Rebecca Pechefsky premiered is 5 at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall on May 22, 2002, I continued to explore the melodic and harmonic impications of the material of that piece and created two subsequent works, is 7 and is 11; these three compositions can be performed collectively as a suite entitiled depending on what the meaning of is is. To obtain either a hard copy or a PDF of the score for depending on what the meaning of is is, please visit www.blackteamusic.com.