The Story of the Adagio
March 21, 1985 was the tricentennial of the birth of Johann Sebastian Bach. On that day I completed my Adagio
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Piano Gallery of Atlanta
In the fall of 1992, having recently completed my Piano Sonata No. 4, I played a series of three recitals,
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Advice to Young Composers
In recent years I have received several inquiries from young composers or would-be composers, asking me: “How do you compose?”
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Thoughts on Meter, Harmony, and Musical Perception
The Academic Papers section of my website includes a PDF scan of a paper that I delivered at the Music
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Nocturnal Conversation
One of the chief tools of an effective composer is contrapuntal imitation. In my Nocturne for Woodwind Quartet, segments of
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Melody as Organism
An effective melody is like a living organism. It develops through stages, each stage growing organically out of earlier stages.
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On the Other Hand
Piano fingering is in my opinion very personal. Pianists vary considerably in hand size, flexibility, and technical skills, and these
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On Scarlatti and Italy
Over a year ago, I posted here about my stay in Siena, Italy, in the summer of 1968. That was
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Recording Dynamics
Producing recordings of classical music, especially Romantic music, presents unique challenges. Consider the audio profile of my Prelude No. 5 (both
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The Homecoming
This program is from a recital I gave at Meredith College in Raleigh, NC in October 1992. The event was
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Revising Piano Sonata No. 3
The original version of my Piano Sonata No. 3, composed in 1987, was the last significant work for which I
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Heinrich Schenker’s Musical Grammar
To say that music is a language is not just a metaphor. Music has syntactical structures very akin to those
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Beethoven, Liszt, and Prokofieff
Below is the program for a concert I gave in Atlanta, GA on September 5, 1986. It was, by design,
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Harmonic Motion in Piano Sonata No. 4
In the archetypical classical sonata-allegro movement, the exposition moves from tonic to dominant (often via the mediant). The development is
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The Origin of Themes (Piano Sonata No. 4)
My Piano Sonata No. 4 is a single-movement work, a little over 26 minutes in length, in sonata-allegro form. Within
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