PIANO PIECE 1967

David Hellewell

Coming at the end of some four years of artistic, moral and spiritual questioning, and taking me several months to compose, this piano piece forms a major turning point in my artistic development both technically and aesthetically.

It was in this work that I developed my own personal intervallic and (a-tonal) harmonic dialectic in virtually complete isolation from the influence of any other composers (although I was fully aware of all the modern development the (I now know) idiosyncratic phrase and rhythmic characteristics within this piece (which were, in actual fact, radical extensions of traditional processes) have continued to remain vital and exciting for me even through my subsequent explorations of new irrational processes (such as my recent 'vectorial extemporisations') and still do so today. I have abandoned virtually nothing of the techniques and aesthetics of this early work; I continually extend and expand outwards from it.

The piece is in seven sections which are played without a break. The first five are in moderately slow tempo, whilst the sixth is a violent cadenza-like passage marked prestissimo. The final section returns to the slow tempo, and the piece ends quietly with a repeat of a phrase from the first section.