Story Behind The Song

This piece was originally composed in 1997 for marimbist Michael Overman, while I was studying with Jay Alan Yim. The piece has a rather varied history and has seen several incarnations, culminating in the present version for piano. It started with a request by Mr. Overman for a piece for solo marimba. As the title is often the starting point for my music, I tried to have fun with this piece by asking two different people for one word each. I asked the first for her favorite adjective. She said ?macabre.? I asked the second for her least favorite noun. The answer came back ?doily.? Putting the two together, the piece became Macabre Doily. While the opening flurries of notes reminded me of lace, the piece quickly grew away from the title, leading me to title it Concertpiece (?He Shouts, He Stomps?). This title was a reference to a work by a friend of mine titled She Sings, She Screams, and also reflected the fact that the piece, in that incarnation, called for the marimbist to stomp and shout as well play the marimba. Upon further reflection, I did away with the extraneous noises and concentrated on the marimba part. I retained the Concertpiece part of the title, as the work is intended to be a concertpiece, and added the word ?house? to refer to the fact that the piece bears the influence of house music. The fusion of popular idioms with ?classical? music is a field of great interest to me and this is one of several pieces that explore these possibilities. This new version for piano adds a few notes and performance markings but is essentially unchanged from the marimba version.

Song Description

In several carefully balanced sections, leading inexorably to a large climax, Concertpiece (House) takes the performer and listener on a kaleidoscopic journey through house music of the mid-1990s. The work incorporates many of the signature melodic and harmonic cliches of the house music genre but fragments them, mixing them up with each other to produce a recontextualized, modern, complex spin on dance music. Versions of the work exist for solo piano and solo marimba; the sheet music is available at www.erichonour.com.

Lyrics

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