These are four brief pieces written for the piano-zither, a 3/15 diatonic chord zither with a simple keyboard mechanism — a sort of miniature table-top piano.  They can also be played on other keyboard instruments, of course.  Here’s a sample of the first piece.

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This little tune was written to accompany some business in Bill Irwin’s Clown Lecture; it was later revamped for use in the PBS show Bill Irwin: Clown Prince. Here’s a bit of it.  

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I wanted to demonstrate the artificial musical language Solrésol for my show The Musical Underbelly.  I decided that one of the famously smutty sonnets of Pietro Aretino would make an interesting example.  I later expanded this for my third string quartet, which is based on several Solrésol translations of Aretino. Here’s the first part of […]

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Lewis Carroll inserted a tune into his novel Sylvie and Bruno, for the song “Ting Ting Ting.”  It’s a fine little tune; so I wrote a set of variations on it.  And this is how it opens.

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The tune I’ve arranged here was first published in Hamburg in 1740, in a pamphlet by Johann Mattheson: Etwas Neues Unter Der Sonnen! Das Unterirrdische Klippen-Concert in Norwegen. It related the testimony of a certain General Bertuch, who claimed that on Christmas Eve, 1695, he and a small group of musicians were led by a […]

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Herbert Blau founded a theater company at Oberlin College in the 1970s. It was called Kraken; and in 1974 it toured a production based on the story of the Donner Party. I was a composition student at the Conservatory at the time, and contributed three songs.

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Diderot is one of my favorite writers, and I’ve long enjoyed Le Neveu de Rameau. So, I was delighted to find a monograph on Jean François Rameau (by André Magnan), and particularly intrigued to learn that two melodies by that curious nephew had survived.  I harmonized them, and made a piano piece from the result; […]

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Shakespeare’s “long word” is used to create an acrostic quodlibet.  I took one measure from each composer: the first measure of a piece by Handel, the second measure of a piece by Olagué, the third measure of a piece by Nichelmann, etc.  The honor roll is: Handel Olagué Nichelmann Offenbach Ravel Iradier Franck Isaac Confrey […]

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“Stumbling Block” is an essay in awkwardness: wrong-note harmonies, recapitulations that peter out, a right hand motif that gets stuck while the left hand moves on.  I played this countless times in shows with Bill Irwin, particularly to accompany some clown and trunk business in The Clown Bagatelles. Here’s the first part of it.

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