My PIANO SONATA had a long and varied history.  I wrote the first movement in 1968, when I was eighteen.  It was the first music I wrote in college at the North Carolina School of the Arts.  I completely balked at writing another movement, however, and it just sat there unfinished.  The summer after my senior year, after I had won but not started my position with the Phoenix Symphony, I wrote the last movement in Seattle before moving to Phoenix.  I wanted to combine it with the Introduction and Movement (1972) as the second movement, and work all the movements into a concerto.  But this did not materialize, and upon reexamination, the second movement did not seem to fit with the other two movements.  I wrote another second movement in 1974 in Phoenix to complete the sonata in its final form.  

Because the music was written at different times and places, each movement has a different approach.  This first movement is a pretty standard Neo-classical sonata movement ala Hindemith.  The last movement is a progressive rondo-type structure and similar on a large scale to the inner movements of my set of songs,  Rain, Rain (1973).  The second movement is a structure that I devised as similar to a crystal, growing from a small cell and then closing back up like a flower.  The second and third movement stylistically predict the writing of City Music in 1974.

RETURN TO "WORKS" PAGE