Product Description
A dramatic pianistic exploration of the lively relationship between the baroque and romantic styles, consisting of an original theme and twelve variations.
Eine Kleine Geistermusik was composed the first week of May in 2003. Although the title playfully nods in the direction of Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, the germinal idea for this unusual set of twelve variations was actually inspired by Schumann's "Im Rhein, in heiligen Strome"the sixth song in the Dichterliebe cycle (see below). The influence of Handel, however, is equally evident in the powerfully baroque character of the theme and several variations.
This is not the first time the theme-and-variations genre has served a composer with strong historicist interests: Brahms created a monumental set of Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel (op. 23) for solo piano; Tchaikowsky wrote his superb Rococo Variations for cello in a style emulating the early eighteenth century; and the Variations on a Theme by Corelli (op. 42) would be the very last work for piano solo ever penned by Sergei Rachmaninoff.
Eine Kleine Geistermusik is a further exploration of the lively interpenetration of the baroque, romantic, and modern sound worlds. It is dedicated to Mrs. Rosemary Brown, whose special relationship with Schumann, Handel, and other great masters of music so happily affirmed the living presence of the past.
Confessions of the Composer as a Young Necromancer
When I was a young man in my teens and early twenties, I often found that while my body was still asleep, my mind would suddenly leave the dream state and become conscious in much the same way that it is when I am physically awake. Of course, what I experienced while physically asleep but mentally awake was far different from objective reality in the ordinary sense. As I had apparently left my body, I could fly over all manner of extraordinary landscapes; visit museums filled with the most amazing artifacts; marvel at curious books with moving words and pictures; levitate or pass through seemingly solid objects; and converse with a host of interesting entities, some of whom claimed they had once lived on Earth.
Because I was a musician, I sought out opportunities to listen to and participate in the creation of music in this other world. Sometimes I would hear orchestras or soloists performing works I could readily recognize: a Bach harpsichord concerto, the Second Symphony of Sibelius, and other music resounded with such exquisite fidelity that I could readily discern individual instruments. Sometimes I would discover scores or hear music I did not know by composers both familiar and unfamiliar, including a fragment of a Requiem Beethoven ostensibly composed after his earthly demise in 1827. On one occasion I even found myself extemporizing beautiful music in a choir I joined during one of these spontaneous outings-something I could not begin to do when physically awake!
In spite of the unusual clarity characteristic of many of these experiences, and in spite of the fact that I could remain reasonably skeptical about the reality of what I was experiencing while I was experiencing it, I eventually decided that I did not want to become a so-called psychic. There were doubts, frustrations, and inconsistencies. There were unsettling recollections of hurtling through walls, feeling strange vibrations and surges of energy, being menaced by hostile entities, and otherwise being exposed to far too much of this sort of thing far too fast. By my early twenties, I had focussed primarily on my musical and academic interests, and these still unexplained phenomena gradually diminished in frequency and intensity.
Who Was Rosemary Brown?
During the same period in my life, I had
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