Program Notes

Crystallization II

After a recent visit to France, the sounds of spectrum music awakened my mind.

The landscape of the Midi-Pyrenees, and an afternoon of listening to Gerald Grissey’s works in Paris prompted me to rediscover the concept and the sonorities of the natural sound properties.  I want to dwell on the richness of the world of fundamentals and partials, reproduce them on the piano, with it’s own rich acoustics, yet avoiding ONE TONALITY, as spectrum music is always composed of.

I started out on the high partials of C to enter the realm of C, then through temple percussion kind of chords to reach the key area of D, followed by the logical A to the surprising Bb ending chord for the first part of the piece. 

The tremolo makes a fresh start of the new section on F#.  Tremolos become the characters of this section, while F# has the embellishment of G#, which later becomes the emphasis, only to arrive at the more stable F# chords, as a cadence for the 2nd part.

G# ushers the 3rd part in a very harmonious call, gradually introduces more tremolos before the glissandi take over.  The tone center again alternates between F# and G#, goes up whole steps to A#, then rests on C.

On the 4th section, A# returns enharmonically as Bb, which leads to Chopin-like F# arpeggios, briefly nostalgic but transparent.  The music soon recaptulates lush glissandi, builds with the effects of the sustain pedal, and finally cadences to F#, the 11th harmonic of C.  The whole process is similar to Crystallization, crystal clear.