Programme notes:

Song of Frey was written in 1991, and was the second of four musical studies in which I re-examined my use of harmony, rhythm, and timbre. The goal of these studies was to find a blend between contrasting parameters which could satisfactorily highlight one another. In other words, diatonicism was used to emphasize chromaticism, a steady pulse was to used to emphasize a freer rhythmic movement, and so forth. It was a search for how these contrasting parameters could be layered simultaneously so that several musical moods were developing concurrently with one another. The conceit of contrasting motives, themes, harmonies, or rhythms is in and of itself not very novel, having been an applied technique since the time of Monteverdi. Further, the usage of timbre as a structural delineator has been a favored technique by the Polish school of composers. My aim then was to blend all these techniques in a type of polystylism. This is not to say that my music seeks to sound polystylistic, but, rather, the eclecticism is used to shape a musical language which wavers on such a fine line between styles that the audience can not tell whether they are listening to tonal or non-tonal music and to neo-romantic or post-modern music. The specific issue which I addressed in Song of Frey was how to layer several musical moods using an instrument which can inherently only play two continuous, simultaneous contrapuntal lines. The result was a movement in which phrases where constantly alternating with one another, overlapping, and, often, discontinuing while the second layer or musical mood is being developed. The second movement in Song of Frey was intended as no more than a contrast to the first movement and a bravura ending to the entire composition Daniel Nelson