Les Formes Mysterieuses (2021) for solo harpsichord.
I love the harpsichord. It is such a challenging instrument, both to play and to compose for. I love to hear harmonies on this instrument, both simple and complex – they take a moment to hear, as the instrument plucks the strings first with a sharp attack, and then the pitch settles in the ear.
I studied harpsichord at the University of Victoria with Erich Schwandt, a wonderful scholar and musician. One of the things that I loved was to play the music of both Francois and Louis Couperin, and especially the unmeasured preludes of Louis Couperin, which one had to decipher from a rather open-ended notation. These pieces require the player to shape the phrasing by ear, shaping the chords in a way that makes sense of the harmony. This kind of feeling one’s way through a harmonic landscape was something I was drawn to in creating the mysterious harmonic shapes of this work. The chords unfold in various ways – sometimes as solid or unbroken chords, sometimes as rolled chords, sometimes as grace note arpeggiations – each one slightly different from the other. It is my way of finding subtle differences in expression of the various harmonies. I am grateful to Wesley for inviting me to create this piece, with the assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts.
