Volume Five: Episodes And Refrains, Quiet Music, Times 3, Time And Again

Lehrdahl is Professor of Musical Composition at Columbia. His music exhibits elegant craftsmanship, original formal procedures, and incorporates “cognitively plausible modes of organization” he believes listeners can understand, not simply creative cacophony. His music is neither traditionally tonal nor fashionably harsh and abrasive. Episodes and Refrains is a series of increasingly elaborate refrains for winds, a bit sensuous and impressionist, but without melodies one might hum. Quiet Music, for piano duo, combines, in a continually quiet dynamic, one piano’s upper register, repeated, simple motifs in running 16th notes with the 2nd piano’s mid-register motifs in thirds, scalar passages and harmonic shifts, The piece evokes visions of geodesic domes in various pastel colors. Times 3, for piano trio, begins with Ratios, skittering chords in the piano, cello melody at times lyrical, at times simply plucked strings, and violin bravura harmonics and broken chords. The result is mild tumult, without gnashing sounds. Cycles overlays a motif played at different speeds by violin and cello, with pianistic colorist effects, followed by variations on this structure. Phases rolls rapidly along, evoking a mildly and then a moderately turbulent stream, followed by quiet, turgid waters. Time and Again features 3 returns of a ghostly string “signal” each taking longer to reach, due to musical sounds in between.