A Second Notebook for Anna for piano

My ‘contemporary Classic compositions, written in 18th Century style, are the fruit of my love and admiration for the magnificent musical universe of the 18th Century. As a performer specialised in Early Music, I increasingly felt it a challenge to experience what was for most of the Masters of the 17th and 18th Centures commonplace: to perform, alone or in an ensemble, one’s own works.

In 1993, helped by the impetus given by my beloved wife and muse Anna, I moved from improvising to composing in Baroque and Classical styles. Through a specialised performing career spanning three decades, I had come to master the historical musical language in the same manner as one acquires a foreign language, by living in the country, integrating the subtle accents and inflections, the gestures, the different tones, and implicit and explicit messages.

The process by which my familiarity with the historical idiom, both in the head as in the fingers, channeled my creativity back into the composition of music which had never existed before, gave me both much insight and pleasure.

In my approach to these piano compositions I have savoured something of that fresh and eager spirit with which musicians in the 18th Century explored the newcomer, the early piano, which was in many ways different from their familiar harpsichord, the keyboard instrument that had been around for three centuries. Music, still indebted to the Baroque tradition, was being transformed on the piano, and with new technical horizons and a widening sound spectrum, a rich variety of emotional colours presented itself to the performer-composer.

I chose to play on a modern Fazioli piano while yet paying tribute to an older keyboard tradition in employing techniques and means of expression derived directly from the harpsichord, clavichord and fortepiano.”

                            Hendrik Bouman