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- Kevin Volans
Newer Music for Piano (1981)
- Chester Music Ltd (World)
Programme Note
In 1980, on the day the Cologne Society for New Music was founded, Gerald Barry, Chris Newman and I founded the Cologne Society for Newer Music. It was a light-hearted form of protest - to bemoan the end of an era when there was no need for a bureaucracy standing between the composer and his work. No longer, surely, would perceived merit be the sole criterion by which work stood or fell.
I wrote Newer Music for Piano in celebration of the event.
It is a collection of virtuosic miniatures. The principal idea was first and foremost to cover the page - cover the page with anything, as long as it had energy and life. We applauded freedom above all - freedom to write in any way we chose - freedom from notions of technique, style, historical correctness and professionalism. In honour of the Davidsbuendler, I declared Schumann’s Intermezzo from Faschingshwank to be an exact copy of my 4th movement (or vice versa). The first movement borrows from Verdi and the last movement sounds remarkably similar to an Indian chant I heard for the first time some 13 years later.
Kevin Volans
I wrote Newer Music for Piano in celebration of the event.
It is a collection of virtuosic miniatures. The principal idea was first and foremost to cover the page - cover the page with anything, as long as it had energy and life. We applauded freedom above all - freedom to write in any way we chose - freedom from notions of technique, style, historical correctness and professionalism. In honour of the Davidsbuendler, I declared Schumann’s Intermezzo from Faschingshwank to be an exact copy of my 4th movement (or vice versa). The first movement borrows from Verdi and the last movement sounds remarkably similar to an Indian chant I heard for the first time some 13 years later.
Kevin Volans