Trombone and piano
SKU: P2.80059
Composed by Alex van
Duuren. Chamber music,
20th century. Published
by Potenza Music
(P2.80059).
Impromptu for
Trombone and Piano was
written, as the title
suggests, rather
spontaneously. Classical
improvisation has always
been a favorite technique
of mine; I very much
enjoy simply sitting down
at the piano and
composing freely through
improvisation, sometimes
for up to forty-five
minutes or more without a
pause. These sessions for
me are both personal and
musical, but in a
seemingly incompatible
way, and with different
affects. As a personal
endeavor, I have always
found improvisation to be
essentially a meditative
exercise for me; after a
substantial bout of
spontaneous music-making,
playing the final note
feels like emerging from
a blurry and dream-like
state. I've always
enjoyed the markedly
improved clarity and
focus that I am granted
in all my non-musical
activities immediately
following such an event.
However in hindsight of
my musical mind, these
long sessions of
improvisation have always
been extremely
unsatisfying...I'm not
really able to retain any
of the musical
information which I
created. The music that I
made, with some choice
moments of
dictation-worthy value,
is not only
through-composed but
essentially
un-replicable. It has, of
course, been suggested to
me that I record these
moments so that I might
transcribe them later,
however as with most
creative things in this
world, a true impromptu
work requires complete
spontaneity; I simply
can't improvise anything
of real value on my own
command. This is the
reasons that I feel lucky
to have wrote this piece.
I suppose it was luck of
the draw to have a brief
stint of enough patience
to combine composition
with short bursts of
improvisation. As both a
trombonist and a pianist,
I am thankful to have the
luxury of improvisational
facility on both
instruments. The result
is that the work is truly
a duet, in that both the
trombone and piano parts
contain original motives.
It is not the case that
the piano part serves to
accompany a melody in the
trombone, because some
music which you hear from
the piano came as
improvisational ideas
before a trombone part
was superimposed on top
of it. And, of course,
the opposite is true as
well. Essentially,
Impromptu was written
like a jigsaw puzzle made
of oddly shaped pieces;
two jagged and
asymmetrical chunks
become balanced only when
they find each other. I
hope you enjoy pulling
the pieces apart as much
as I enjoyed putting them
together.
