Today marks one year on earth for my youngest, our son Tijani. In the year of his birth I wrote a three-movement work for piano. The second and third movements are presented here.
As with the pieces written for Tijani’s older sisters Remi and Kenza, the music here is diatonic, in the key of C major/A minor throughout. I work with simple forms and materials to create something that is childlike, quotidian and yet abstract; composed systematically with a sensibility that wanders between intuitive and arbitrary.
“Lullaby” is a canon of overlapping broken chords in a set of progressions. Each voice in the canon has the range of a fourth. The chord voicings are slightly more sophisticated than in the previous movement, though still based on diatonic roots.
The title “Young Afro Future” is based on a combination of my wife’s nickname for our son and the cultural realm of Afrofuturism. There are three main melodic ideas; the first, a pattern of ascending fourths in the right hand which goes through changes in pitch and harmony; the second, a bassline of staggered octaves which becomes a root-fifth-octave pattern in the second section. The first section of the piece is based on a rhythmic pattern of nine beats; the second, fours alternating with threes. The third idea arrives in this section: progressions of four-note chords, moving in half notes alternating with dotted quarters and later, dotted half notes. Once again I take inspiration from Bach’s Prelude in C Major, in the idea of repeating a musical pattern over and over but substituting new harmonies each time.
Happy birthday, dear Tijani!
Composed 2014
Recorded 2015, Roland digital piano direct to file
Photos: Bruce Russell (“Lullaby”), Nehal El-Hadi (“Young Afro Future”)
Music and composer’s notes copyright Bruce A. Russell 2015
EL MAHBOOB 