Sonneries Parfumées
Recordings
Notes
Sonneries Parfumées won third prize in the Piano2000 competition in Tokyo, staged by Zen-On Music. This was the only time I have ever entered a piece for a competition. The reason I did so was because the theme was Bach (it was the 250th anniversary of J. S. Bach's death) and I had an idea related to horizontal and vertical polyphony. I combined the spirit of Kaikhosru Sorabji's 'Le Jardin Parfumee' in the horizontal domain with Erik Satie's 'Sonneries de la Rose+Croix' in the vertical domain. Both composers acknowledged Bach, but also sought to destroy him. In Sorabji's case, this was done through the excessive elaboration of multiple contrapuntal lines. In Satie's case, he went back to school late in life to learn exactly how to demolish Bach chorales. The result is a complex and improvisatory nocturne, full of quiet elaborations and fin-de-siecle harmonies.