Piano Solo
During the early months of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, I had a lot of difficulty finding the energy to compose, and as spring turned to summer I decided to set myself a challenge in order to get back in the saddle, as it were. Normally, a piano étude provides a specific challenge to the player, forcing them to study and master some specific element of performance. In this piece, however, the challenge was to me as the composer; I gave myself some very constraining limitations on the composition of these pieces, forcing myself to write in a different manner than I usually use (I’ll spare the details, but these included pre-determining the exact number of notes per movement, and specific allowed and disallowed intervals, meaning my options were quite limited). This technique proved quite effective at inspiring me to not only write more music, but also to write some interesting movements I probably wouldn’t have some up with without this challenge.
The individual études in this set do not have any particular order, although each should be played exactly once (without repeating or omitting any movements). The performer’s choice of which order to play the études in can be based on whatever considerations they choose, perhaps relating to the compositional details of the various études, or to the overall musical effect. The piece as a whole should be performed in the following manner:
Prologue
Any 5 études in any order
Interlude 1
Any 5 études in any order
Interlude 2
The remaining 5 études in any order
Epilogue
for information on obtaining sheet music, please contact me at WalkerWilliamsMusic@gmail.com