Piano Sonata

Piano Sonata took on a lot of different faces as the writing process took place. There were a lot of very fundamental ideas I wanted to stretch out really far - things like space, contour, melody. I wanted to create a set of works that each try to push some parameter to its extreme. But as the work progressed, I was continually drawn to the idea of musical axes, not just as compositional devices, but as a means of representing a "mirror-like" quality that allowed me to look into my own life and see how these fundamental parameters seem to derive from people and experiences in my life.

Andante and Allegretto aim to push the envelope of space as much as possible. The subtraction-gesture in the opening and throughout the rest feels to me like a doorway into the space between the notes, unlocking a sort of "inverted" melody. At the climax of Andante, the sonorities of the movement collide, emulating this notion of compressing the previously explored space. Allegretto serves as a contrast point for Andante. Rather than exploring the space, Allegretto defines a rigid space at the start and refuses to deviate.

Largo and Presto push a different envelope forward. Largo is a very personal piece to me, and the only piece in the set to really derive around a florid melody. This melodic content for me pushes the work into a more introspective state, and Presto follows this up with a realized mirror. In Presto, the notion of an axis is slowly developed more and more up until the ending, where the axis around E and Eb is fully exploded, and the mirror-like introspection comes to a conclusion.