A Little Suite for Joe

or The Affable Euterpe

So, regarding the name: Joe is certainly affable; a lovely host as ever, a joyful interlocutor, and a companion for early breakfasts (before rehearsals) or late dinners (after gigs).

Euterpe might seem an odd choice for a harpsichord piece; plucked strings in an ode to the music of flutes and lyricism. But, in the end, Wittgenstein is always right; it's all about family relations; Euterpe is the daughter of Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory. Joe and I are in the hermeneutic club, would our love of the past's presence in the now, and the mess of Hartog's interregnum; we are both in the brotherhood of simultane-ists, wherein the ancient and the immediate are equally operative and valued.

This little suite is _very_ baroque in its affect, if not its structure; it is more overtly 'historicist' than most of my pieces, and embraces the forms and pacing of its precedents even more than works like the Partitas. The first movement (i. formalities / prelude) is a prelude in the Modern 'style brisé', full of turns, breaking, and contrast. The second movement (ii. mnemonic / louré) is a lyrical dance, a lourée, which brings contrast by exploiting the multiple manuals of the harpsichord. The third (iii. return / gigue) is a dance, again all proper until compression and retrogression set the world cattywampus.