A is for Ambiguity
An intriguing feature of my Romance for Oboe and Piano is the ambiguity between A-natural and A-flat. In the piece’s home
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Works by Robert Cunningham
Rhapsodic Harmonies
Harmonically, a typical classical work begins by defining the tonality to the listener, through the use of tonic flanked by
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Music of the Night
We usually think of piano nocturnes as tranquil pieces, typically featuring a lyrical melody over left-hand arpeggios. Yet some of
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Waxing Rhapsodic within Tonality
My Rhapsody for Woodwinds and Piano is harmonically adventurous in places, even flirting with exoticisms such as octatonic, but the
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Structure of the Nine Preludes
The preludes in my set of Nine Preludes for Piano Solo can be played independently, but in some ways the
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The Composer and the Performer
Sergei Rachmaninoff is widely recognized as one of the finest of all pianists, with technical and interpretative powers of the
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Prelude No. 6: Unity within Diversity
The human mind thrives on perceiving unity in the midst of diversity, and that perception is at the core of
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The “Arch”-itecture of a Rhapsody
One might expect a “rhapsody” to be a sprawling affair in which new ideas are invented in the enthusiasm of
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I Have a Star!
“Midway through life’s journey,” writes Dante at the beginning of the Inferno, “I found myself in a dark wood.” The
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Nine Preludes: The Pattern Revealed
Composers of preludes frequently present them in a structured key sequence. The preludes and fugues in Book I of Bach’s
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Poetic Endings: The Major-Major Seventh Chord
At the end of a piece, sometimes we seek something more expressive than a simple tonic triad. Several of my
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Meditation: The Old within the New
The human brain delights in recognizing the familiar in new guises. In music, motives and themes are constantly transformed into
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Music à la Mode
In medieval and Renaissance times, before tonality developed into its modern form, Western music was based on a system of
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The Magic of Octave Displacement
As I pointed out in my very first post to this blog, if two pitches are an octave apart, the
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Time Travel in Music: Rounds and Fugues
Our last two blog posts looked at how two or more distinct melodies can be juxtaposed in counterpoint. But it
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