Merrian-Webster defines “pianism” as “the art or technique of piano playing.” By extension, one might infer that “pianisms” are a collection of items which celebrate/display things unique to the piano and its players.

I started this suite of solo piano pieces back in 2024, writing a 15-bar snippet which sat and stared at me for almost a year before being transformed into a finished piece, “Rondo-B’out.” Being as I’m not a pianist myself (I can find things on the keyboard, but not play them with confidence and speed), it was really hard starting out. However, when I finally got through it, I had so much fun that I decided to pursue the medium more fully with a suite of pieces. As always, I had an educational goal of learning the capabilities of the instrument and its better practitioners. I had loftier goals than what I’d done for the instrument in The Voice Lesson (for accompanied chamber chorale), the orchestral work The Coast, as well as chamber works Je danse, J’apprends and The Great Barrier Reef.

As I progressed, a few things common to the whole project began to arise…

• Humor: Besides the obvious “punny” nature of the piece’s various titles, the music itself has some very playful musical ideas. I purposefully picked forms which have serious distant historical pasts, but their presences here are lighter, sometimes even satiric.
• Musical quotes: The first of the suite, “Rondo-B’out”, is perhaps an exception — although the thematic content has some stuff that might sound familiar, it doesn’t quote anything specifically. But after that I made sure that each piece had some thematic part that quoted another musical source. (See each project page for details.)
• Flow: I ended up selecting introductions for each based on the ending codas of the previous piece in the suite. Although each can be selected and performed as individual solo piano pieces, performing the entire suite in sequence reveals these thematic connections.
• 3+ voices: One might infer that, with two hands, two “voices” would be the default for a solo piano piece. However, when one listens to accomplished composers of solo/concerto piano works, one finds that the implied two voices is often expanded. I was determined to embrace 3 and 4 voice passages, learn how to notate then, and insure that accomplished soloists can play them.
• Creative tonalities: This isn’t new for anyone familiar with my compositional style, but I spent a lot of time in these pieces creating tonal patterns that playfully jar the ear a bit, with two concessions: 1) as always, there are traditional tonal centers with triadic approaches in thematic units (with, of course, lots of added tones), and 2) each piece starts and ends in the same tonal center (“key”), giving a satisfying return, beyond those provided by the overall forms themselves. (Each piece follows a different over-arching form, so see individual piece project pages for that.)

This page will serve as a link between each piece that is created specifically for the Pianisms suite. The list at the top will expand as I write more pianisms!