Lake (2016)
for
piano solo

by
Robert Morris

Program Notes

Lake is a short and calm piano piece written in April of 2016. As in many of my small-scale piano pieces, such as Still or Lichen, I try out new compositional structures to see what it is like to compose with them. In the case of Lake, the new structure is an array of notes that has a representative of each of the 30 Z-related hexachords arranged into a 5X6 aggregate-forming array. This compositional design is a two-dimensional version of the one-dimensional strings and cycles imbricating the same Z hexachordal-types I have used in Nine Piano Pieces, or Meandering River (also for piano solo). Octave doubling is used to distinguish the parts of the array, adding resonance to the slow harmonic pacing of the piece.

Perhaps this lake is like that of Schoenberg’s “Summer Morning by a Lake” except that the air is clearer and perhaps more numinous.