A Short Book of Harmonies

Notes

Most pieces of Western music are, one way or another, collections of harmonies. But my piece is particularly focused on that aspect, and a nod too in the direction of John Adams’ Harmonielehre, itself a provocative response to Schoenberg’s eponymous work of harmonic theory. If Adams’ 1980s piece was to do with pinning a very defined set of tonally-oriented harmonic colours to the mast, mine is about how many different kinds of harmonies can be included in the same piece. A narrative of harmonic fragments and types unfolds. Some are also tonal-leaning but others suspended, some gentle, others fierce, some bright, still others becoming very dark. By the end, I hope to have taken the listener on a kind of journey – one as expressive as purely musical.