model include a choice of new keys and modes: C (Lydian), D (Dorian), E (Phrygian), E-flat (major), F (minor), G (Mixolydian), A (major), and B (mi- nor). New prelude forms presented include chaconne, sequence-based praeambulum, elevation toccata, written-out improvisation, minimal- ist etude, and passacaglia. The con- trapuntal forms include a wide range of imitation-based forms, many pre- dating the 18th-century style of fugues found in the first “Little Eight.” These include canzona, ricer- care, three-part canon, chorale fughetta, and fugal gigue (bi-partite). Uses of contemporary compositional technique include quartal harmony, tone clusters, and additive rhythms.
A personal document Finally, this collection is a personal
statement, not a general survey of form or style. Although I am grateful for the rigorous training I received as a composition major at Princeton in the ’70s, it was there that I became a postmodernist before I even knew what the word meant. Both the aes- thetics and the politics of the highly charged modernist music department already seemed to me a thing of the past. I felt no loyalty to the fiercely austere code of modernism and still less to the music it produced. I have always responded to form in music, but naturally I need to be able to per- ceive it in the first place. I always could in Frescobaldi and Bach, Hin- demith and Reich; I almost never could in Babbitt and Carter, Boulez and Boretz. As time passed, I gradu- ally discovered that feeling “uncool” was a modest price to pay for making objects that I found beautiful on my own terms. Eclecticism, playfulness, a deep regard for historic procedures— these are the traits that have charac- terized my work from its beginning. As I write this, I have nearly com-
pleted the collection. I have worked hard on these little pieces, and I very much hope it shows in the end. With this score I offer four heartfelt salutes: to the Guild for its truly admirable (and essential) outreach to the next generation, to all young organists and their teachers, to the bold young peo- ple the rest of us oncewere, and to the “mildly talented composer of the 1730–50 period” who gave us such a gift in the first place.
JamesWoodmanis monastery organist for the Society of St. John the Evangelist and the Episcopal religious order in Cam- bridge, Mass.
AUGUST 2013 29
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