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Flower
For Solo Piano
Derek Cooper
(2014)
By Derek Cooper
For Solo Piano
Program Notes:
"The Life of a Flower" was conceived by guidelines given to me for the
overnight assignment as part of the audition process at the Manhattan School of
Music for entrance into their DMA program. The guideline given was to use the
opening chord from The Beatle's hit song, "A Hard Day's Night." The chord is
shown below in two different variations. The first notable characteristic of this
chord is that all of the notes are from a pentatonic scale. Therefore, I immediately
began considering the challenges of writing a 21st century piece while basing it
upon a pentatonic scale. Typically, I use dissonances in order to create tension in
my music and push the excitement forward. However, when using the pentatonic
scale, there are no in the way of minor seconds. And so, if I wanted to stay true to
my challenge, I needed to find another way to create tension in this piece.
The pentatonic scale lead me to think of South East Asia where the scale is
commonly used. There, tension is often discovered through nasally, direct, and
By Derek Cooper
For Solo Piano
Notes to the performer:
-The score will need to be memorized since the music stand will need to be
removed in order to play inside the piano
-For this piece, the performer will need:
- a small chisel with a thin blade approximately 1 inch or 2.5 cm wide
(enough to cover the strings of a
M2 apart)
- a hard rubber xylophone mallet
- a guitar pick or something similar to pluck the strings with
-In measure 1, the chord should not be heard. Instead, the notes should be
suppressed so that the sostenuto pedal can effect the given pitches. The sostenuto
pedal should remain down until measure 11.
-Starting in measure 16, the left hand should move the blade of the chisel away
from the performer on the strings of the given pitches, creating harmonics going
up, indicated by the up arrow. In measure 17, the opposite should be done,
indicated now by a down arrow. (See symbol legend below)
-In measure 96, use the hard rubber xylophone mallet in your left hand to glissando
down the top section of strings inside the piano. The ball of the mallet should
glissando between the bridge and the hitch pin. (This is the furthest section of the
exposed string) The top section of section of strings can be defined as the area
from the furthest right inner stress bar until the right edge of the piano. Repeat this
technique throughout whenever this is seen.
-In
In measure 124, strike the lowest strings inside the piano with your left palm
while letting the cover of the keyboard fall open after closing it just a bit. Make
sure that the sustain pedal is depressed when you do this to allow the echo of the
bang to occur inside the piano.
Symbol Legend:
- Move chisel away from you on given string(s) inside the piano,
making the harmonics go up. (This will, of course, cover strings other than tthose
notated, which is intended.)
- Move chisel away towards you on given string(s) inside the piano,
making the harmonics go down. (This will, of course, cover strings other than
those
ose notated, which is intended.)
q = 120
ppp
niente
Sost. Ped.
ppp
niente
ppp
Forearm cluster
Pitches are approximate
fff
16
rit.
pp
niente
20"
q=90
subito
2
24
32
40
accel.
ord.
53
q=132
57
R.H. play on the string inside the piano with guitar pick
62
68
4
79
84
89
93
ord.
5
97
103
109
115
dim. poco a poco
6
Put guitar pick down quickly
121
q=120
30"
q=90
fff
129
ppp