As Far As You Can Stretch a Web (2019)

This five-movement work for solo piano was commissioned by my friend and colleague, Matthew McCright, via the support of the Minnesota State Arts Board.

I thought about Chopin preludes and etudes as I wrote, the ways their sound would sometimes fill my childhood home as my father practiced, very early on, or demonstrated them for me, later in my life as a musician: the A major prelude, which he called a perfect piece, emphasizing for me that if the right-hand singing line disappeared it was gone forever; the “Aeolian Harp” etude, marvelous in person, telescoping hands and again, that beautiful singing line; the “Revolutionary” and its left-hand cascades that gave me chills.

In a sense my efforts as a composer attempt to recover the joy and wonder that I felt in those formative moments, the page a way to get at those sounds and gestures that I could never manage with my hands. Writing music, at best, puts me in that dumbfounded state of witness, and the process of making this music got me there. I thought about the elasticity of the pieces that I took as models, but really found a footing in the negotiation between deliberate, hard-won hands-on-keyboard work and developing and expanding that material through loose, large-scale processes.

I thank Matthew McCright for commissioning this piece, and dedicate it to him with gratitude. The Minnesota State Arts Board supported the commission, so I also thank that organization, its selectors for this round, and my fellow Minnesota resident taxpayers, many of whom are actually happy when their money lands on art. I also thank Christine Williams, for supporting me in this somewhat insane endeavor more generally, and for her observations of the left-hand work in initial drafts of “Grid." “You are basically guaranteeing that this piece is only playable by men,” she pointed out. I tried to fix that and the piece is better for it, musically and otherwise.

My parents came to visit us as I wrote this piece. I stumbled through what I could at the piano, showed the rest via computer playback. I have always loved playing my music for them, particularly compositions for piano. It takes me back to Williams College and my first efforts writing for the instrument, and it takes me further back, to the Baldwin upright in our house with the red double doors, where I first came to love Chopin, and banged out show tunes and the opening to Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. There is a web around that piano and this is how far it has stretched, thus far.

June 25, 2019