Violin and Piano

Approx. 15 minutes

2009

Rhetorical Devices is a set of nine miniature movements written for and premiered by the outstanding Krechkovsky-Loucks Duo. A colleague challenged me to hand-write (with just pencil and paper) a piece from beginning to end … not putting any notes into the computer until it was completed, and this was the result. I hadn’t realized how much using the music layout software was influencing my writing, and I found the process very freeing, allowing me to take full advantage of this opportunity to write for such notable artists.

Each movement is inspired by a different way of communicating an idea. In some cases, like “Babble” or “Bicker” there is a fairly straightforward dialogue between the violin and piano. In other cases, like the Tweets and “Discourse” the score is more impressionistic, and less theatrical in nature. There is no overall program to the set, though the “Prophesy” movement does base it’s predictions of the last movement on the preceding seven movements. Other than that, each one is a self-contained idea.