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Work


Shattered/Blue Ground

for piano

Year:  1991   ·  Duration:  9m

Year:  1991
Duration:  9m

Composer:   James Gardner

Films, Audio & Samples

Sample Score

Sample: Pages 1-2 ,5-6, 9, 12-13

See details ➔

Borrow/Hire:

To borrow items or hire parts please email SOUNZ directly at info@sounz.org.nz.

About

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”