Program note

Piano Counterpoint No. 1 is the first in a series of five other Piano Counterpoints, each in a slightly different style.

Piano Counterpoint No. 1 was initially a part of a three-part composition for three pianos, however, recently, I have found the remaining two movements (an ouverture and a second movement) too reductionist and uninteresting and thus I scrapped the whole piece.

This counterpoint is based on a dissonance I found while I was playing with tritones. My idea was to make the interval sound consonant in a way. The introductory part consists of one of the pianos alternating between C major and F sharp major, chords a tritone away from one another. Next, I found a harmonic progression that leads to an E major type of sound. This is where other pianos join and build a more complex structure. Afterward, the harmonic progression is played in reverse to get back to the tritone dissonance and the piece ends there.