The Octatonic Collection in the Piano Quartet
As with many of my compositions, much of my Piano Quartet is lushly Romantic. The second theme of this sonata-form
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Author: Robert Cunningham
Thematic Transformation in the Piano Quartet
My Piano Quartet was composed in 1993 and revised in 2018-2019. The piece encompasses a wide variety of moods and
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Tonal Structure of the Piano Quartet
My Piano Quartet, composed in 1993 but revised in 2018-2019, was recorded in February 2020 by violinist Cari Sue Jackson,
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My Aesthetic Goals in the Piano Quartet
My Piano Quartet was composed in the fall of 1993, as part of my work toward an M.M. degree in
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Word Painting in Sonnet XVIII (Part II)
Part I of this series discussed word painting in my musical setting of Shakespeare’s Sonnet XVIII — that is, how the
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Word Painting in Sonnet XVIII (Part I)
Shakespeare’s Sonnet XVIII (“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”) is one of the most famous poems in the English
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Piano Sonata No. 3: A Remarkable Combination
The first movement of my Piano Sonata No. 3 resembles the exposition of a classical sonata, except that in this
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The Story of the Piano Quartet
In 1993 I was already a seasoned composer, having completed a wide variety of compositions and obtained performances of many
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The Triptych Sonata
A triptych is a set of three panels presented side-by-side, each of which may or may not constitute a complete
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Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy View
Page turns are an annoying nuisance for musicians, especially performers of chamber music. The problem is worse for pianists, since
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The 2019 Musical Soirée
Musical soirées were an important part of my musical life for about a dozen years beginning in the early 1980s.
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Welcoming the Bösendorfer
On August 21, I posted about the day five years earlier, on August 21, 2018, when I parted ways with
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Farewell to the Kawai
If you love life as passionately as I do, then you embrace progress with enthusiasm, but sometimes you also experience
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Sonata Form in Five Sonatas
The sonata as we have known it since the Classical period involves two separate but intertwined ideas, and my five
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Compositional Process: The Melody of Life (Part 4)
Over the last three posts to this blog (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3), I have been describing the
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