Kyle Gann: Nocturnes for piano
I had long wanted to write some nocturnes, because I love the original ones by John Field, and I am partial to the genre in general - but in the Romantic era the form became so bound up with piano virtuosity that I feel that few examples are sufficiently... nocturnal. I wanted quiet piano pieces that one could listen to, musing, on a calm evening. I also wanted to dissociate the genre from the sectional, often ABA form into which Chopin developed it (in frequent contradistinction to Field), bringing it into a more postminimal idiom.
Trois Nocturnes Ambiants
(2021-22)
PDF score1. Collines de Lavande (Lavender Hills)
2. Souvenirs d'un Tango (Memories of a Tango) in E-flat
3. Crepuscule sans Fin (Twilight without End)Late in 2021, pianist Francois Mardirossian asked me to write a piano piece for his ambient music festival in Lyon, June/July 2022. I had long wanted to write a quasi-ambient work for piano, and as I began sketching and thinking, my preoccupation with nocturnes emerged. Collines de Lavande descends a hill twice, first as minimalist pattern and then as chorale. Souvenirs d'un Tango is based on (expanded from) a sketch for a tango I wrote in 2015. Crepuscule sans Fin is greatly extended from a passage in my septet But Even So, which I had just completed. Since this was a commission from France and I speak some conversational French myself, I thought the French titles would be a courteous gesture to my hosts.
Duration: 22 minutes
World premiere (Collines and Souvenirs): by Francois Mardirossian, at the Superspectives Festival in Lyons, France,on June 25, 2022
World premiere (Crepuscule): by Francois Mardirossian, at the Conservatoire d'Ales, France, on December 9, 2022Nocturne for violin and piano (2023)
PDF scoreAfter completing my Third Nocturne Crepuscule sans Fin I realized that it might go well with a melody running above it, so I wrote a violin part. The piano part is unchanged (reminiscent of those 18th-century piano sonatas with optional violin).
Duration: 8 minutes
Nocturne No. 4 in D - Nora in the Night (2022)
PDF scoreMy fourth nocturne was inspired by a nonsense poem, "Northern Lights," by the incomparable cartoonist Walt Kelly, creator of Pogo:
Oh roar a roar for Alice,
Nora Alice in the night,
For she has seen Aurora
Borealis burning bright.A furore for our Nora!
And applaud Aurora seen!
Where, throughout the Summer, has
Our Borealis been?I immediately wanted to write something with a similar rhythm, and a similarly playful treatment of rhythm.
Duration: 4 minutes
Nocturne No. 5 - The Argument of Innocence (2023)
PDF scoreLike several of my pieces, my fifth nocturne was inspired by a poem by my favorite poet Kenneth Patchen. The Argument of Innocence is one of his picture poems, the entire text of which reads, "The argument of innocence / can only be lost / if it is / won."
Duration: 6 minutes
World premiere: by Isabelle O'Connell, at the Diller-Quaile School of Music, New York City, May 3, 2024
Nocturne No. 6 - Spectral Dance (2023)
PDF scoreThe central section of Nocturne 6 is a melody I wrote in 1997 for a piece I never brought to completion. At that time the musical movement known as spectralism was not yet on my radar; I imagined a dance of ghosts, specters, and intend no reference to that European idiom. The intro and outro passages came from another earlier sketch, closely related in rhythm. Thus the piece rather harks back to my style of the 1990s based on shifting among various tempos. I do love the 9:4 ratio between dotted and triplet eighth-notes.
Duration: 5 1/2 minutes
World premiere: by Tsotne Sidamonidze, at the Musiikkitalo Sonore, Helsinki, February 16, 2024
Nocturne No. 7 in A-flat - Night Sky (2023)
PDF scoreNocturne No. 7, perhaps the simplest piece I've ever written, requires no explanation.
Duration: 7 minutes
Nocturne No. 8 - Homage to Clementi (2023)
PDF scoreMuzio Clementi, justly admired by Beethoven, is one of history's most underrated composers, and his piano sonatas (far more ambitious than the sonatinas for which he sadly remains best known) deserve to stand next to those of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. My Eighth Nocturne is a collage of some of my favorite passages - not the driving themes one associates with him, but the delicate, static moments which evoke music boxes. Most often quoted here is the slow movement of Op. 40, No. 1 in G, and also Op. 36, No. 2 in F (second movement), Op. 50 No. 3 in G minor ("Didone abbandonata," first movement), and Op. 34, No. 2, also in G minor (second movement). I wanted to hear all his delicious pedal points freed from the obligatory dramatic tropes of sonata form. Visiting Westminster Abbey once, I chanced to glance at the pavement and was startled to see Clementi's name, for he is buried there. It was like running into an old friend. If anyone likes this nocturne enough to start checking out the Clementi sonatas I will be very happy.
Duration: 6 1/2 minutes
Nocturne No. 9 - Am Grab von Bruckner (2023)
PDF scoreNocturne No. 9, rather uncharacteristic for me, arose spontaneously from an emotionally charged experience: visiting the St. Florian Monastery outside Linz where the great Anton Bruckner worked, and seeing his grave in the vault beneath his favorite organ. I was taken there by the dedicatee, composer Martin Gut, to whom I am grateful. There are no quotations from Bruckner's music, but I did try to match the mood of the Seventh Symphony's Adagio, and the F minor tonality seemed apt. This is the only piece I've ever written entirely outside the U.S.
Duration: 6 1/2 minutes
Nocturne No. 10 - The Eddying River (2023)
PDF scoreMy image for Nocturne No. 10 was a flowing river dotted with spiraling eddies. I looked up the phrase "the eddying river" and found it associated with The Iliad and other pre-Homeric texts, so it seems to be the translation of a rather common ancient Greek phrase. (I ought to claim it was inspired by my reading of The Iliad.)
Duration: 7 1/2 minutes
Nocturne No. 11 - Managing Expectations (2023)
PDF scoreNocturne 11 in F-sharp Mixolydian mode (occasionally sneaking into Lydian) is a jaunty exercise in pandiatonic counterpoint that keeps making you expect something specific, sometimes giving it to you, sometimes not.
Duration: 7 minutes
- Kyle Gann
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