Music for Piano with Orchestra

About

This work is not really a conventional concerto, nor a symphony, but rather, a hybrid of the two. The first movement is inspired by Egyptian Oud Music, and is a series of variations on a nine-note Messaien-inspired mode of my own invention. Each subsequent variation before and after the "Taqsim" has a number of measures divisible by nine. This is also true for some groups of time signatures. While this may seem arbitrary, in fact it is (we composers are often an arbitrary lot). The second movement is a pastiche of how a slow movement to a concerto might have sounded if Anton Bruckner had written one (however, adaptations of two melodies, "Vanoční Rosíčka" and "Orduan Berbe Dibinoa" – of Czech baroque and Basque folk origin respectively – are employed). Movement three is titled after an aphorism in Twee (a West African tongue) and means, metaphorically, "I'm no better than you are." While using György Ligeti's concept of placing two diatonic melodies a minor ninth apart, my work also moves into different bi-tonal key relationships, thereby providing some harmonic movement (although not movement in the traditional western classical music sense). It also emulates some African dance music where often one finds regular beats of unequal length. The final movement uses two Renaissance melodies as its foundation, "A la Guerra, A la Guerra," and the title melody. In addition, there is a melody for the second group (we are dealing with sonata form, here) which has its origins in the folk music of the langue d'Oc region of France.