This piece began life as an outgrowth of some projected piano studies that had been pestering me for completion. As I worked on the piece it began to take on interests of its own and I became preoccupied with possibilities absent from the original studies. Consequently they remain impatiently awaiting realisation, with the harmonic framework as the only link with this piece.
This piece has something to do with the following fleeting thoughts and obsessions:
Limits Restraints Constraints
Making sections and phrases rhyme in some way.
Non-literal yet recognisable repetition.
Something a little bluesy in the background.
Just ‘beyond’ the piece.
Just out of reach.
Ground as the all-pervasive harmonic and rhythmic frame
with its concomitant restrictions.
All sections should have shadows of the others in them.
Changing States. Instability. Things threatening to disintegrate or evaporate.
At any moment.
Decay, congealing, freezing, seizing up, thawing, unravelling.
Certainties dissolve into questions.
To quote Pete Wylie:
“Just when you think you’ve got it all nailed down, you find it’s all screwed up”
