Trilogy consists of three pieces for piano and orchestra, fashioned from material originally written more than twenty years ago. At the time I thought of the material as three movements of a piano concerto.
At the time my knowledge of the piano was limited to listening to piano music and tinkering on my electronic keyboard - I had very little conception of playing techniques, in particular of what is possible and what is not possible. For the most part the same was true for the instruments of the orchestra.
Since then I've taken instruction both in piano playing and orchestration, so when I revisited the material last year I realised that from both perspectives it needed serious revision. And, whilst I still liked the major themes, I realised also that the music was rather monotonous! So I abandoned the idea of it being a piano concerto.
In the end it was my liking for the themes that caused me to embark on radical changes - to the point where the pieces are now quite different from the original.
The thematic base for Trilogy as a whole is heard in part 1, in the sense that the themes in parts 2 and 3 grew from this, using rearranged fragments. You can probably hear this quite clearly in part 2, perhaps not as obviously in part 3. Once the themes are stated, however, there's not a lot of purely thematic variation. The variations come primarily in the orchestration, using different orchestral colours/combinations, and in the tempos and rhythms used.
The structure of each part is similar - beginning bit, middle bit, end bit based on the beginning bit (a form of A-B-A). In parts 1 and 3 the main difference between the middle bit and the other bits is tempo. In part 2 the difference is meter and rhythm. In each case these differences offer contrasting moods.
This is just the way I saw it as I composed ... you may well see it differently.
It's not unusual for me to write a piece and then finish the score after the fact. Such was the case with the Variations. However, at long last I have completed both the score and the parts for this piece.
You can view them here.
I'm going to be working on the score for Trilogy, and on making this web site "responsive", for ease of use on hand-held devices ... then I'll start thinking about new compositions.
