Ann Silsbee

Piano

Composer's Note:

A simple request some years ago for piano pieces of intermediate difficulty generated a pleasurable sideline activity of composing short unpretentious pieces for piano with a sort of natural "singing my song" feel to them. Some of the pieces do make considerable musical and technical demands on the player, but none require a "virtuosic" technique for performance. May they take their place among their musical ancestors from Byrd to Bartok, in a piano repertoire rich with such short works.

It has seemed to me that the three Ceremonies, which form an imaginative and harmonic structural framework to the whole collection, also stand very well on their own as a smaller group. They explore some of the simpler aspects of the alternating scale, forming their own loosely connected pianistic world.

From Journeys, Hymns, and Ceremonies.