Balkan Songbook

My Balkan Songbook began with a commission from the outstanding Cavatina Duo to write a piece for their "Music from the Balkans" concert programme. The idea was to create an original composition using pre-existing material from a folk song. As I worked on the piece and began listening to more of the music from the region, I became increasingly drawn to the incredibly rich musical culture of the Balkans. Though of course the music varies greatly from country to country (and even within individual countries), common traits emerge in the use of complex asymmetrically structured meters and modally-based scales and harmonies.

The songbook is conceived as an ongoing, somewhat open-ended project, with more pieces gradually being added in the next years, ranging from fairly straightforward arrangements to more abstract musical "games" played with the material provided by the music of the Balkans.

Individual piece programme notes:

The Shepherd's Dream: While perusing a folksong collection, I came across a little tune labelled as "Croatian Lovesong". Though only eight bars long and extremely simple in its rhythmic and melodic construction, I became somewhat obsessed by the haunting beauty of this melody (I am often troubled by these "earworms" (as the Germans call them), which can sometimes cycle constantly round in my head for days on end). In any case, as I sang the melody over and over in my mind, an image began to form of a shepherd on a hillside in the still evening air, playing variations on the melody as he drifted off to sleep. The score is headed with an excerpt from a poem by W.B. Yeats: "And I dreamed my lost love came stealthily out of the wood/With her cloud-pale eyelids falling on dream-dimmed eyes".

First performance: Cavatina Duo, 2008.

Sivi Grivi: Sivi grivi ("Gray mane") is based on a dance from the Pirin region of Bulgaria. Typical of the region, the piece employs an asymmetrical meter (7/8 in this case), and has a largely stepwise diatonic melody featuring the exotic sounding augmented 2nd interval. The piece is dedicated, with great admiration, to the Cavatina Duo.

Commissioned by the Cavatina Duo (flautist Eugenia Moliner and guitarist Denis Azabagic), and first performed by them in 2008.

At Sunset: At Sunset is based on the beautiful Macedonian song "Zajdi, zajdi", the lyrics of which are a poignant evocation of loss (of youth, love, or almost certainly both). I approached this piece as something of a stylistic exercise--in homage to Rachmaninoff.