DESCRIPTION:
Performed by the composer in Nanjing, China.

This is a single movement with sonata-form characteristics. The performance here is part of a concert featuring Calder’s pieces that took place at the Nanjing Music and Art Institute in December, 2001. In this video, the first note—a quarter-note “d” adjacent to “middle c”— is unfortunately not clearly audible. The movement begins by gradually building on a simple four-measure natural-minor idea centered on this “d,” confined to a range of four notes. In measure 35 a sixteenth note figure is added to the developing texture, the first phase of which culminates in a “tympani roll” deep in the base in measures 51 and 52. A more relaxed subsidiary theme then appears in A major. After about twelve measures of this, the rhythms and tonalities of the first phase take over again, and the expository phase ends in measure 78, where another “tympani roll” introduces the developmental phase, in which the subsidiary idea plays a prominent role. When material of the expository phase returns in measure 110, it is so altered in nature, that it seems more like a continuation of the development than like a return. The subsidiary idea recurs in D major, still very much altered. The music then subsides into a reprise of the quiet and simple opening measures, ending on the “d” with which the movement began. Though this piece presupposes a single performer, the score frequently makes use of four and five staves, in order to make the voicing clear to the eye.

Inquiries concerning scores and performance rights can be addressed to: Eric Henry, ehenry (at) email.unc.edu