Pachel's Bells
for Piano
by Dan Welcher
Chamber Music - Sheet Music

Chamber Music Piano

SKU: PR.160002150

For Piano. Composed by Dan Welcher. Solo part. With Standard notation. Composed January 4 1986. Duration 6 minutes. Theodore Presser Company #160-00215. Published by Theodore Presser Company (PR.160002150).

UPC: 680160034819.

This brief work is the result of a dare I accepted in 1986. Pianist Robert Spillman, then on the faculty of the Eastman School of Music, told me he was so tired of playing atonal music that he didn't want to look at anything more harmonically advanced then the Pachelbel Canon for at least a year. Never one to turn aside from a challenge, I determined to write a little birthday present for Bob.   Pachel's Bells is, essentially, a kaleidoscopic viewing of the all-too-familiar Kanon in D, in which the key of each new episode is a departure from the previous phrase. Consequently, while all the melodic and harmonic elements of the Public Radio Fundraising Masterpiece are preserved in intact, the result is like looking at a famous photograph through a prism - one can recognize the images, but everything is a little off, and the resulting colors are such a departure from the original that the effect can be dizzying.