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| For those that love Modern Classical - Wayne Alpern, Modern Music (Henri Elkan) Kari Gaffney, Kari-On Productions Modern Music Music for Solo Piano Composed by Wayne Alpern Produced by Judith Sherman Performed by Steven Beck Artist: Wayne Alpern Label: Henri Elkan Music Street Date: June 27, 2025 Artist Website: waynealpern.com The album was produced by Judith Sherman, perhaps the most prominent and universally acclaimed classical music producer in the world today. It was my great honor and privilege to work with Judy. This album bears the stamp of her very high professional standards of musicianship. I especially valued her complimentary comparison of my music to that of C. P. E. Bach, Bach's most famous son. Modern Music, my eleventh album, extends my musical practice of compositional reinvention— reimagining and reinterpreting different musical styles, historical genres, and vernacular idioms in the language of modern music—to the essential realm of solo piano. The single performer is the piano polyglot and musical wizard Steven Beck, a stalwart in the bustling New York new music scene and one of the very few pianists capable of mastering the multiplicity of different keyboard styles this ambitious project requires. The album was produced by Judith Sherman, perhaps the most prominent and universally acclaimed classical music producer in the world today. It was my great honor and privilege to work with Judy. This album bears the stamp of her very high professional standards of musicianship. I especially valued her complimentary comparison of my music to that of C. P. E. Bach, Bach's most famous son. My approach is to explore music from diverse historical, cultural, and individual sources as repositories of aesthetic values, structural techniques, and idiomatic characteristics that I am able to absorb and reinterpret through a process of musical transformation in order to create entirely new music, modern music that is both internally reflective of my own identity as a composer, yet at the same time grounded and connected to the external world and nature of music itself. The titles of the twenty short pieces in this diverse collection are objective categories borrowed from traditional musical forms, styles, and genres to manifest this interactive dynamic, rather arbitrarily subjective labels having only to do with me and my personal experience, but are now updated and reborn in the contemporary context of musical modernity. These titles should not deceive, however, but rather enlighten; this is new wine in old bottles. I aim for an aesthetic synthesis between old and new that invokes the authority and inter-subjective legitimacy of the past, and uses it creatively to channel the freedom and indeterminacy of the present. In music as in life, tradition need not be a shackle restricting creativity, but a torch that lights our path in the quest for originality and authenticity. Modern Music offers a fresh perspective on the dynamic synergy between tradition and creation, balancing the known with the yet to be discovered. In this sense, the album seeks to transcend time itself by blurring the barriers between past and present, and unifying aesthetics across a multiplicity of compositional styles in a single musical moment. This artistic endeavor to compose music that is simultaneously alive to the present yet grounded in the past emerges through the paradox of constrained creativity, taming the imagination in order to set it free. This paradox is eloquently captured in the words of the great Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, master of the musicality of language itself, quoted in the album's cover jacket: "I hold a beast, an angel, and a madman in me, and my enquiry is as to their working, and my problem is their subjugation and victory, downthrow and upheaval, and my effort is their self-expression." Art is the ageless struggle between the beast, the angel, and the madman within the mind and soul of the artist in the effort to simultaneously subjugate them yet proclaim their victory through their unified self-expression. This album of solo piano pieces offers a glimpse into my compositional workshop. The piano is where my music is first conceived, where trials and errors take place, and the imagination roams unhinged. It is the site of experimentation and exploration. The piano is my sanctum sanctorum, my musical laboratory. This is my private sanctuary where the Muse herself comes quietly to give birth. Modern Music is a collection of untold musical secrets, of ideas imagined taking root within me. This is the nursery of creativity and the mirror of my musical soul. What follows is a description of each composition, judiciously selected from many others, which I chosen to make public. 1. March This bold march-like introduction to the album begins with a series of forceful, declamatory chords in the crisp, hard-edged, percussive style of Igor Stravinsky, raising the curtain on the modernist agenda. This extroverted chordal exposition is immediately followed and contrasted by flowing melodic passages in a lyrical introverted manner. The oscillation and interspersion back and forth between these two different musical gestures continues throughout the piece. This dialectical contrast between assertion and reflection, between exteriority and interiority, has historical roots in the opposition between the first and second themes in the classical symphony or sonata form. The powerful declamatory four-note opening motive of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, surely the most famous in all of music history, is contrasted by the gentle lyricism of the second theme. In the genderized language of traditional music theory, the "masculinity" of the first theme is complemented by the "femininity" of the second theme. The alternation between these two musical qualities in this instance simulates a rondo form, achieving their integration on a higher level of musical structure. Although this piece invokes these traditional sonata and rondo principles, my choice of its title as a march, which generally lacks the lyrical component, highlights the radicalism of its modernist transformation. 2. Gigue This is a delightfully mischievous piece in a swirling 6/8 meter that is reminiscent of Paul Dukas' Sorcerer's Apprentice made famous by the Disney movie Fantasia. Three different themes and styles are at play. The music most notably features extensive counterpoint in the scholarly or "learned" style of polyphony represented in the music of Bach. The principal theme achieves modernization through its disjunct motion of wide intervallic leaps in fourths, fifths, and sixths, as opposed to more conventional conjunct melodic motion in seconds and thirds. The propulsive 6/8 rhythm gives the Gigue a strong dance-like ambience suitable for a ballerina en pointe in unconscious tribute perhaps to my wife, an acclaimed teacher of professional ballet in New York City. 3. Prelude This is a luscious, dreamy homage to Maurice Ravel in a twentieth-century French impressionist musical style. This commodious mood is punctuated by contrasting rhythmic passages evoking George Gershwin's jaunty American in Paris and Ravel's own snappy Spanish influences. The modern jazz chords used here employing added 9ths, 11ths, and 13ths derives from the impressionist harmony of Ravel and Claude Debussy. The symmetrically equidistant whole-tone scale characteristic of French impressionism fosters an eerie sense of tonal disorientation between stable diatonic sections. 4. Variations This is a set of four modern variations on a theme by the Italian Baroque woman composer Anna Bon di Venezia composed in 1757. There were few female composers in the eighteenth century and Anna Bon’s work is largely unknown. I was introduced to this charming music by my friend the music theorist Robert Gjerdingen, an expert in the eighteenth century art of Neapolitan partimento, which many great composers studied and is illustrated in the music of Anna Bon. The theme is radically transformed and modernized by invoking the vamps, rhythms, and idioms of Broadway show tunes and the richness of Bill Evans’ jazz harmonies. 5. Aphorism An aphorism is a concise and pithy articulation of an idea or concept, used here to characterize both a distinctively aphoristic musical style and a composition within that style. Atonal music fractured the traditional syntax of tonality, triadic harmony, and meter in favor an expanded gestural language of chromatic dissonance and arrhythmic juxtaposition. Arnold Schoenberg initiated this style in the early twentieth century, and his student Anton Webern exercised considerable musical influence after 1945. Many of Webern’s free atonal compositions are exceptionally brief. This dissonant piece of “new music” is in an aphoristic and pointillistic musical style reflecting the highly fractured and fragmented gestural language of modern atonality. 6. Partita My greatest musical teachers and influences are first Bach, because of his perfect synthesis and equilibrium between the horizontal or contrapuntal and vertical or harmonic dimensions of music, and second Mozart, because of his melodic, motivic, and structural clarity. Bach’s great keyboard pieces include the Partitas, which might be considered his Italian Suites along with his English and French Suites. This piece is a modern revival of and homage to Bach’s partitas, exploiting the extensive use of polyphonic imitation where a motive in one voice is altered and repeated in another, creating a sense of unification with variation. The strictness of traditional counterpoint is ameliorated here through what Stravinsky called “piano counterpoint, ” allowing for greater harmonic dissonance and melodic freedom, and occasional references to vernacular American idioms of jazz and rock music. 7. Reverie Reverie is a contemplative piece in a slow, consonant, minimalist style. In the late twentieth century minimalism provided an alternative to the complex dissonance and rhythmic irregularity of atonality. Repetition is its principal compositional technique. Here the steady bass arpeggiation provides a structural framework for minor variations in the melody above. The result is a hypnotic trance-like state eliciting a feeling of longing and nostalgia. Unlike the other pieces on the album, Reverie uses studio techniques to fade out in a subtle and gradual manner. The piece was composed to lament the passing of my brilliant young nephew who died of cancer 8. Novelette This is comedic musical portrayal of the Keystone Kops, where staccato chords are punctuated with accelerating arabesques in the pianistic style of Frederic Chopin. This is cartoon music providing the aural background for a chase scene featuring Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton. The Keystone Kops were fictional, humorously incompetent policemen in silent, black and white slapstick comedy films. Musical humor is achieved by repetitive clichés, unexpected wrong notes, irregular cadences, and snappy articulations. Joseph Haydn was the master of musical wit and a strong influence on my compositional approach in general. Igor Stravinsky notably enjoyed cartoons and cartoon music. 9. Bagatelle A bagatelle is a short instrumental piece in a light and unpretentious style. This one utilizes vernacular folk guitar styles and riffs. The playfulness of the music gradually intensifies through the use of chromaticism and harmonic pedal points. The piece was choreographed for young dancers. 10. Toccata “Toccata” comes from the Italian toccare, meaning to touch, and is used to describe a keyboard piece in tactile, physical style. This modernized toccata is based on an unpublished sketch of Bela Bartók for his pedagogical piano collection, Mikrokosmos. I discovered an unused fragment in the Bartók archives and freely expanded upon it to create my own composition. Dissonant percussive harmonic sections alternate with angular contrapuntal passages. The chords are not traditional harmonies, but rather dense tone clusters and atonal simultaneities emphasizing sonority over tonal function. These are essentially percussive “piano slaps” where the keyboard is treated more like a drumhead or sonorous surface than a tonal matrix of individual notes. 11. Nocturne This is an introspective character piece in the style of Chopin’s nineteenth-century piano Nocturnes. The slow introduction offers a series of chords evoking an optimistic musical mood in the Americana style of Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring. This optimism carries over into the innocent diatonic melodies and scalar passages of the middle section, culminating in a sense of confidence and hopeful possibility toward the end. 12. Raga This is an upbeat rhythmical piece evoking an Indian raga style in 10/8 meter. Whereas most western music is written in duple or triple meter, the ten eighth notes here are generally grouped as 3+3+2+2. I studied Indian music for a brief period with Harold Powers at the University of Pennsylvania and took tabla lessons privately. I composed a more substantial raga titled Vishvakarma, the Hindu god of creativity, appearing on my album Secular Rituals. 13. Courante The courante originated as a light Renaissance dance form in triple meter. Set in a 6/8 meter with a moderate tempo, the word literally means “running.” The sprite agility and flowing, wave-like quality of the music features a gently propulsive running rhythm, which is enhanced by lively contrapuntal inner voices that add melodic intricacy and harmonic richness. 14. Divertissement This piece subtitled Radio presents a kaleidoscopic juxtaposition of famous musical passages simulating the act of arbitrarily turning a radio dial. The result is a collage of musical snippets or sound bites. It begins with the adagio from Schumann’s Second Symphony, followed by Schoenberg’s Piano Piece Op. 11, No. 1, Stravinsky’s Petroushka, Bartok’s Fourth String Quartet, Erroll Garner’s Misty, and Haydn’s Piano Sonata in D major. The piece ends with double glissandi across the range of the entire keyboard and a handclap. 15. Operetta This piece captures the theatrical melodrama of operatic music, particularly the wit and charm of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. Melodrama is an exaggerated version of drama, and operetta is a lighter version of opera. With its steady rhythmic pulse, scurrying sixteenth-note theme, and strong bass notes, this composition approaches “program music” with theatrical and dramatic overtones. 16. Masquerade This quixotic little piece, performed in an easy swing style with jazz eighth notes, conveys the playful mystique of a masquerade ball, where participants’ true identities are concealed beneath masks and costumes that create a coquettish and mischievous feeling of intrigue. 17. Rhapsody This is the most complex and ambitious piece on this album. It is a virtuosic journey in the exuberantly expressive and occasionally bombastic pianistic style of late nineteenth-century Romantic music. The music embodies the tumultuous Sturm und Drang (“storm and stress”) aesthetics of late nineteenth-century German Romanticism, which was an emotional reaction against the classical rationalism of the Enlightenment. The piece evokes the music of Brahms, Schumann, and Liszt, with sudden and dramatic juxtapositions, thick full-handed chords, melismatic flourishes of fleeting thirty-second notes, and intensive tonal chromaticism. A middle section develops motivic imitation in percussive octaves reminiscent of Bartók. The pianist Steve Beck delivers a tour de force in performing this extremely challenging composition. 18. Fughetta This piece is a modernized reinvention of a traditional eighteenth-century fugue or fughetta adding touches of contemporary jazz harmony. I composed it in music school at the University of Michigan nearly fifty years ago as a counterpoint exercise. My professor praised the piece for its stylistic accuracy up to a point, but then criticized it for “devolving into a sort of cocktail music.” I regarded this as confirmation of my success in its modern transformation and a stylistic synthesis of old and new. 19. Passepied This piece is in the style of contemporary minimalism created by Philip Glass and Steve Reich, with whom I worked. It utilizing the characteristic features of motivic repetition, harmonic consonance, extended pedal tones, and a steady rhythmic pulse. The passepied originated as a 16th-century French court dance and was subsequently developed in ballet and opera. Bach used this genre in his keyboard suites. Debussy, Stravinsky, and Prokofiev all revived it during the twentieth century by injecting new life into traditional forms in the manner, exactly as I am doing here. 20. Sonatina This is modern music in the style of a Clementi sonatina or Scarlatti sonata. It reaffirms conventional compositional techniques of motivic integrity, thematic development, contrapuntal imitation, and functional diatonic harmonic progression, but transforms them into a modern aesthetic context. The music also shows the influence of Haydn, with his mercurial emphasis upon wit and charm over profundity and pretention. The climax of the piece features strong, ringing, clarion chords reminiscent of Stravinsky that serve as a fitting conclusion to the entire album. TRACK, TIMES, COMPOSER: 1. March 3:13 2. Gigue 2:56 3. Prelude 3:16 4. Variations 3:42 5. Aphorism 1:17 6. Partita 5:02 7. Reverie 3:19 8. Novelette 2:22 9. Bagatelle 2:24 10. Toccata 1:19 11. Nocturne 3:34 12. Raga 2:09 13. Courante 2:16 14. Divertissement 1:14 15. Operetta 4:15 16. Masquerade 2:12 17. Rhapsody 8:52 18. Fughetta 2:47 19. Passepied 4:22 20. Sonatina 3:48 PLAYERS, INSTRUMENT: Music for Solo Piano Composed by Wayne Alpern Produced by Judith Sherman Performed by Steven Beck write your comments about the article :: © 2025 Jazz News :: home page |