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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Music Theory
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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Dualism in a Rachmaninoff Prelude
Harmonically, music of the classical period was based on tonic-dominant polarity. The subdominant served only a subsidiary role, introducing the
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Hemiola (Part II)
In my last blog post (Part I), I explained about the musical device known as hemiola, which is often used
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Hemiola (Part I)
The healthy human mind loves being active, recognizing patterns and especially solving puzzles. That applies even to math puzzles. Perhaps
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A Romance for Clarinet and Piano
My Romance for Clarinet and Piano was one of my early compositions (1983, revised 2017). It abounds in lyrical melodies
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Telescoping
My Lament for Flute and Piano was inspired by the stylistic innovations of early Baroque opera. The composers in this
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Fluctuating Meters
My Lament for Flute and Piano was inspired by early Baroque opera and by the ideas of the Florentine Camerata
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A Fugue for Oboe and Piano
The finale of my Sonata for Oboe and Piano is a playful, energetic rondo in D minor, where the predominantly
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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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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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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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