Composition

Notes

Glee: n 1: great merriment 2: malicious satisfaction 3: Partial email address for Genevieve Lee, the dedicatee of Gleeful Variants.

As this piece came to life, I found myself drawn to one of the simplest of musical elements: the major triad. That is of course the harmonic basis for much of the world’s music, and appears across many cultures and many centuries.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, many composers have looked for original harmonic entities other than the centuries-old triadic construct; among the many approaches tried have been unexpected combinations of those very triads in non-tonal contexts. Some combinations are quite dissonant, some juxtapositions are quite jarring. Nevertheless, the sense of any harmonic construct is influenced by the prominent presence of triadic elements, which lend a particular kind of stability, however contradictory, to whatever music it participates in.

All of the notes in Gleeful Variants are derived from major triads, generally in an easily heard manner. Magical moments in certain pieces of Stravinsky and Messiaen came to mind as work on the piece progressed. Merriment, satisfaction and thoughts of Genevieve Lee’s artistry, if not her email address, are all part of the mix.