2011, March 12th. French Suite

[Derek]

After I recorded these pieces I realized they each had an individual character which reminded me vaguely of some of those ancient baroque dance forms. I made no conscious effort to emulate the specific genres though, just the overall baroque style. Hope you enjoy them!

[ted]

Very good indeed, and a reminder that we do not need to play thousands of notes at ninety miles an hour to transport ourselves. In recent months you have undergone a leap of perception with regard to combined melodic phrase and harmony. It might have come from the clavichord playing but I tend to suspect it is a natural growth stage of your playing in general.

Obviously, you could include much more in the way of changes of tonal centre; you are fully capable of handling that in a way which is not too cavalier for the underlying spirit of the idiom, which I am sure you do not wish to lose.

Aside from listening to the WTC now and then, I possess little in depth knowledge of the music of that era. Even if you were doing things inconsistent with common practice or theory I would be the last person to pick it up. I do know that such concerns are irrelevant to my personal listening pleasure, and these little pieces, in their own way, are very transporting - "pure spirit", as Huxley was fond of saying.

[Derek]

Wow, thanks Ted! I didn't expect a response like that about these little pieces. I include two more similar baroque pieces as bonus tracks.

The first of these two starts out having recently been improvising more in a pianistic manner in a roughly romantic style but it kind of spills into the baroque style and then stays there. One fun thing that happened recently was realizing that using chromatic lines need not be as intimidating as "The Craft of Tonal Counterpoint," a book which I've never been able to understand in the slightest, makes it seem. The principle of thirds takes care of this just as well as diatonic movement.

The last one was really supposed to be a part of the above french suite, but I couldn't think of a genre for it so I called it "Thing."