Steps Volume 2 - Studies of Invention - piano solo - 2007-8

A visit to the Leonardo museum in his birthplace of Vinci in the summer of 2007 provided the inspiration for a set of studies/inventions. The reconstructions and models of designs by one of the most productive, creative minds in history set me wondering what more human emotions might have lain behind his moments of insight, frustration, joy and wonder. It is thus those rather than the "products" themselves which these pieces seek to explore. As time progressed over the Autumn of 2007, with various books read, the scope of the set expanded to include drawings, paintings, philosophical and literary starting points.

This volume, unlike the first Steps, is a true cycle and is ideally performed as such. However, it is subdivided into three books which could work as separate units. I also have no objection to players selecting freely to make their own performance sets which indeed many have done.

"I have listened with great pleasure! Your musical language is very much your own, clear and strong, never sentimental, yet with great inventiveness for rhythms and harmony. And there is a deep thoughtfulness about it, that makes one sit and dwell further when each piece is finished...."
[Mario Ramon Garcia - on Studies of Invention]

Book I
Flying Machines
Sixty Beggars
Old Man with Water Studies
Study of a Woman's Hands
The Kite of the Cradle
Book II
Tank
Polishing Imperfections in Glass
A Moth to the Light
Perspectives of Disappearance
La Scapiliata
Book III
The Existence of Nothingness
The Impossibility of Perpetual Motion
Lenses for Looking at the Moon
Study of a Deluge
This is the Way Birds Descend

If you have arrived at this page from a search engine (e.g. Google) and cannot see the menu system, please click here.