Composer/Teacher/Scholar/Performer
“Abendmusik” means “evening-music” and can refer both to evening church concerts and to courting serenades sung outside the beloved’s window. This piece uses the clarinet dark, round timbre to evoke the hushed intensity of evening. Delicately winding melodies woo the listener with their Mozartean charm.
AbendmusikI. Adagio-Allegro appassionato
II. Menuetto (Allegro Moderato)-Trio
III. Adagio
IV. Allegro molto
My third string quartet is long, passionate, and complex in structure, composed in the tradition of Beethoven’s late quartets. The first movement bends and stretches classical sonata form into something freer and more various, but still motivically unified. It begins in the “wrong” key, avoids a convincing cadence until the end of the exposition, and foreshadows one of the secondary theme in the introduction so that first becomes second, and second, first.
The second movement is a minuet and trio. The minuet, with its pizzicatos and syncopations, has a subdued melancholy echoing Brahms, while the rough-mannered, cheerful trio, with its use of drones, recalls Haydn’s “folk music” affect.
The Adagio movement is a free hybrid of sonata-rondo and theme and variation forms. The main theme is clear variation of the tender, slow theme that began the first movement, while the fugato that follows is based on the austere transition to the Allegro.
The finale is a sprightly, puckish Rondo in G minor.
String Quartet no 3 in G minorI. Andante lamentoso–Allegro
II. Andante
III. Allegretto
This piece was commissioned by fellow Frost School of Music student David Parks. When I asked what sort of piece he wanted me to write, David mentioned two things: that he loved the opening of Mozart’s dissonance quartet (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08uY0-ehL-w) (No. 19 in C Major, K. 465), and that surprisingly for a string player, he had a special liking for the key of D-flat major. While D-flat major is a particularly difficult key for strings, it has a special, almost muted sound, which I employed in the Andante movement.
Mozart’s dissonance quartet inspired the opening of the first movement: dark and richly chromatic. Like the Mozart opening, the introduction briefly emphasizes “wrong” notes and slips quickly into distant keys before arriving at the main Allegro in E major. The main theme of the following Allegro section comprises three motives: a short fanfare-like motto, and a drawn-out, song-like melody (a la Don Giovanni courting(link)), and an elegant, weightless conclusion. Everything else in the movement stems from these three motives. The second movement begins and ends with a long-breathed, arching melody. Passed back and forth between the piano and violin, it slowly unfurls over an accompanying clock-like staccato figure. The piece concludes with a dark, melancholic rondo in E minor, with a main theme that seems both to dance and sigh. The final bars bring the sonata to a fiery, passionate close.
Sonata for Violin and Piano in E minorTema — Andante e rubato
Var. 1 — Allegro
Var. 2 — Quasi tempo I ma un poco meno mosso
Var. 3 — Allegro
Var. 4 — Adagio
Var. 5 — Vivace
Var. 6 — Grave
Var. 7 — Allegro – Tempo I
This piece was commissioned by fellow Front Music School student Joanna Gonzalez. There is a strange union of peace with ecstasy, contentment with wonder, in the great variations of classical composers (Bach’s Goldberg Variations, or Beethoven’s late variation movements, or Rzewski’s The People United, for example). Continuously retracing the same patterns in ever new ways, the music traces a winding, mysterious path, coming full circle to conclude where it began, but transformed.
This smaller piece captures hints of that great art. The initial theme is more suggestion than melody, a haunting outline of possibilities to come. The first five variations draw heavily on Bach’s counterpoint and figuration, while the sixth occupies a different expressive world, full of sadness and doubt. This is answered by the alternatively triumphant and playful seventh variation. The piece concludes new version of the theme: what was previously suggested is now fully realized.
Variations for Piano in D majorThe title of this piece means “the melancholic one.” This feeling of pensive sadness mixed with longing is evoked by two contrasting musical ideas: the passionate rushing figure which begins the piece and the drawn out song melody first heard in the horn. Below the horn melody, the strings maintain a bustling texture, highlighting the emotional intensity of the melody.
Il Malincolico for Oboe, Horn and String TrioI. Allegro
II. Andante quasi Adagio
III. Allegro vivace
I composed this piece for horn players Szilard Molnar and Rhonda Kremer as a companion piece to my String Quartet no. 2. The instrumentation was inspired by Mozart’s Piano Quintet K. 452, a piece for oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon, piano. In place of an oboe, I substituted two horns, because it would be such fun to compose with the Classical “hunting horn” figures normally reserved for orchestral works. The final movement begins with such a figure, first heard in the piano, quietly, almost as a suggestion to the horns. The horns take up the suggestion, entering in jubilant forte.
This piece is characterized by the special timbre produced by the four winds: an especially warm, blended tone. Acting as a wind choir, this quartet of winds passes musical ideas back and forth with the piano. An even more distilled wind trio appears in the second movement’s opening, a low, rich chorale for two horns and bassoon. As the movement develops, the winds trade a warm, amorous theme back and forth with the piano, delaying the clarinet’s entrance. After the theme, the clarinet finally enters with an extended and passionate aria-like passage. As the spontaneous, playful character of the outer movements might suggest, this instrumentation was especially fun to write for.
Quintet for Clarinet, Bassoon, Two Horns, and PianoI. Allegro ma non troppo
II. Andante quasi Adagio
III. Menuetto–Trio
IV. Adagio lamentoso–Allegro
My second string quartet was completed in the winter of 2014. In this piece I tried to rein in the scope and complexity of the musical forms, striving for a sense unity and inevitability. The first movement is at times austere, at times warm and genial. The slow movement is a group of variations on a tender, sighing theme. The third movement is a boisterous minuet with a serene and peaceful trio. The final movement is prefaced by a slow lament, which stands in sharp contrast with with playful exuberance of the ensuing allegro. Just before the end, the lament briefly returns, but playfulness gets the last word. The quartet was premiered at my recital at the Chapel of the Venerable Bede, Miami.
String Quartet no 2 completeI. Allegro piacevole
II. Adagio
III. Allegro piacevole
My first piano sonata was completed in the winter of early 2013 for my friend at the University of Chicago, Nathan Harris. The piece is suffused with a kind of warm, tender lyricism. This is the first piece I wrote where I thought more of motives and phrases and less of themes or melodies. The first and last movements are both marked “Allegro piacevole,” fast and pleasantly. While the first movement is more boisterous and dramatic, the last is more like a rustic dance alla Beethoven. The lyrical slow movement, with its long arching melodies, is characterized by tender yearning and melancholy.
Piano Sonata no 1 in Ab