Short Stories
by John Carbon
Piano Solo - Digital Sheet Music

The 24 pieces contained in my Short Stories for piano were composed between

2013-2018. I had originally grouped the pieces into a collection titled The Well-Blended

Primer (subsequently withdrawn). I substantially revised, in some cases reconceived, the

entire collection in 2017-18. Because my original intention was to include pieces that

exhibited pitch centricity around each of the 24 possible major and minor keys, the

earlier title, refering to J. S. Bach's 2-volume Das wohltemperierte Klavier, seemed to fit.

As in Bach's work, some of the pieces in my collection exhibited a pronounced

contrapuntal attitude. During the development of the work I had planned to alternate

prelude and fugue-like pieces, but the end result was more of a hybrid collection that

could be thought of as being influenced by Bach, but even more so by Chopin's group

of 24 one-of-each-key Preludes, and systematically key-centered contrapuntal collections

by Hindemith and Shostakovich. I was also influenced by shorter character pieces by

composers such as Schumann, Debussy and Prokofiev that exhibit a more lyrical,

narrative nature, to name only a few composers.

In Short Stories, my plan to alternate preludes and fugues, or at least to systematically

vary the degree of contrapuntal density, isn't readily perceived. There is certainly

enforced variety in pitch centricity, but this feature isn't arranged symmetrically, and

there is a range of tonal, modal, chromatic and atonal languages explored in the

collection. Stylistically, there are many influences to be heard here. In fact, some of the

titles of the individual pieces refer to other piano composers (for example Tea with

Claude and Maurice, Czerny's Id, George Sand's Dream and Joplin's Tick). The name of

the present work, Short Stories, describes these modest narratives better than the

original title and the revised collection is less abstract than the 2013 version. From a

pianist's standpoint, I would venture to say, these reconceived pieces are more

concerned with color, register and voicings particular to the instrument. Some of the

more extensive revisions I made to the original pieces were stylistic ones involving

changes in the harmonic language and articulation. In other cases I fleshed out sketch-

like miniatures into more substantially developed portraits, or conversely, I deleted

what I thought might be considered to be extraneous material that obscured the

abbreviated sketch-like nature of the narration.

John Carbon