The initial inspiration for The Chimeras came from the writings of Gerard de Nerval, especially his set of sonnets of the same name. In these poems (as well as his prose writings such as Daughters of Fire) there is a clarity of language, as well as a tendency for the texts to create constellations of images that reach back into different times and places. With these piano pieces I tried to create works that are melodically and harmonically direct, dramatic, and yet at times elegant and naïve. As the set unfolds the pieces reach back to quote and evolve ideas, and at the end the last piece, I remember, is something of a Proustian recollection. Throughout the seventeen pieces there is an accumulation of ideas that are drawn from many periods of European culture including French New Wave cinema; German literary romanticism and the sublime; the saltimbanque; the English pastoral; Ancient Greece and its later impact. All historical time is rolled into the present, which is perhaps a predominant feature of our own age. The melodic clarity, and at times simplicity, may be alarming, but I wanted the pieces to be direct in their impact. Like Valéry (‘what is there more mysterious than clarity’) or Baudelaire with his, ‘Images, my great primitive passion’; or even, Valéry on Les Fleurs du Mal, writing of Baudelaire’s combination of eternity and intimacy - each piece ties to project a concept that is condensed and individual, but which reaches out into a network of relationships and symbols (correspondences). The success of this depends on the lucidity of each fragment, where each passage can be perceived and related to others. Although these pieces can be played as a set and are arranged in an order that creates dramatic cohesion, any number of them can be performed in any order. The series is also ongoing, these seventeen pieces being a temporarily resting point before continuation.