Winter snow and mist

[ronde_des_sylphes]

An old improvisation which seems appropriate atm with the weather being horrendously cold where I am (I view it as a kind of winter tone poem for piano). I have edited this, not in any splice type sense  but simply to take out the various ambient noises and add reverb, so I'd hope the audio quality is a fair bit better than when I started!

Anyway, I'd like to say a little about the more theoretical or technical aspects of this. I suspect my style is fundamentally different from some people here, in that I really do place increasing emphasis on the formal and structural aspects of improvisation (and, no, I don't find it limiting at all, I find provides an architectural framework for my ideas). The harmonic aspect of this is very defined by what I've talked about before as "floating tonality", exploiting the ambiguity of certain chords to create a texture which is tonal but not necessarily in a given key for more than a fleeting moment (that said, I'd certainly say this piece is in F# min). The harmonic techniques are definitely influenced by late Liszt and Wagner (as it happens, I think there are references to Parsifal in this). Within my harmonic framework, I view (for example) F# min, Eb min and A min as very closely related keys which can be moved between fluidly. That said, perhaps it's best not to over-analyse, it's a bit like explaining a joke you thought was clever.

The artwork wasn't my original inspiration but I find it appropriate and I enjoy matching images to the mood and what I feel the music is portraying.