Stanley M. Hoffman

Fantasypiece

The duet version of Fantasypiece for violoncello and double bass was composed in 2001, an arrangement for chamber orchestra was completed in 2002. The title has multiple meanings. The musical language, what I regard as free tonality, is one that I had always wanted to employ but never found occasion to use. By free, I mean employing unusual dissonances in a controlled manner within a tonal framework. The discourse of Fantasypiece involves the presentation of musical passages which set up a polemic between chromatically colored harmonies and tonal ones. The piece opens with a brooding theme featuring the tritone interval, followed by an interlude leading to a liricotheme. Chromatic, transposed variations on that interlude return throughout the piece to frustrate the attempts of increasingly tonal music to prevail over chromatically colored music. One even hears a cantando Neo-Classical sequence with running sixteenth notes a couple of times over the course of the work, as well as a set of ornate, Baroque-like variations on the lirico theme. Near the end of the piece, an extended recapitulation occurs which is utterly devoid of chromatically colored harmonies, making it seem as though that sort of music will prevail: a passionate, celebratory Tango ensues. All of this is to no avail for, in the end, the chromatic harmonies return and the piece ends on the ambiguous interval of the tritone with which it begins. '
- Stanley M. Hoffman
Duration: ca. 12:40. Includes two scores.