Hubert Howe

solo piano

This work is a fantasy in the sense of Chopin's fantasies, which consist of several sections in relatively free form. There are three broad sections with an extended transition between the second and third. The opening, marked "emphatically," consists of short passages in extreme contrasting registers and dynamics that builds a mosaic which completes its structure by the ending, which comes to rest quietly in the middle register. The middle section is lyrical and expressive, which builds chords that sustain while melodies are played above and below. Sustaining chords are continued in the transition, while melodies anticipate the final section, and they are continued to the ending. In the first part of the last section, the chords move more slowly than the melodies, and the emphatic texture and tempo of the opening returns at the end, where the chords and accompanying melodies both sustain through the measures. The piece was written in the fall of 2016 and spring of 2017.