(February 4, 1993) "Solitude" was written at one sitting during a break between lessons, and first performed by Beth Cleaveland, in the spring recital of that year. Now she is Beth Cleaveland Smith, married and raising a family, and probably wishes she HAD more "solitude"!
This is also one of the few pieces that I have written that included student "input". During an early lesson, Beth over-reached a broken chord and played a C natural where she should have played a B. I liked the sound of the passage and changed it.
This piece has always been a favorite in my studio (until "Arietta" in 2005 it was my most-frequently-studied piece), and has been played by pianists of all ages. I have used it as a church offertory, and played it at weddings as well. It is a simple melody with just enough supporting broken chords to keep that melody front and center, with a few surprising harmonic turns along the way.
(May 26, 2013) This piece has a checkered past. It was originally part of a longer, discarded piece. I decided to take it out of that context (a lyrical B section to an inferior more rhythmic A section) and add a coda. This was completed on what would have been my mother's 83rd birthday and is dedicated to her memory. That following Sunday, I played it as an offering at Franklin (Georgia) United Methodist Church.
I like this piece very much, but don't play it as often as I should. It's a little more difficult than a casual glance would suggest, and I am guessing that it would appeal more to an adult or advanced student.
(May 12. 2014) This piece became an immediate "hit" with my Facebook friends when I posted a "scratch video" after writing it. It is, for all practical purposes, a figuration-driven piece, perhaps a mini-etude. In my studio, it has been a favorite of students of all ages, and it is dedicated to an adult student of mine, Dale Allen.
(March 18, 1996) This originated as a sketch for flute and piano, and has been played in that form. Tiffany Oliver Cole gave the first performance in a piano competition at Gordon College in Georgia. (The judges disqualified her; they didn't think the piece was classical, but she returned the next year and WON. You can read our common story here.) Her first public performance of "Seaside" was as her farewell performance as Miss Troup Teen 1995.
It is a favorite of mine - a little more difficult than most of my output, and possibly unique in my output. To this date I haven't written anything else in a similar style.
Here it is performed by my friend Andrys Basten. The pictures used were taken on a trip to Pawley's Island, South Carolina, in August of 2014 with my friend Van Martin.
My first composition. 1971. I was eleven years old. I played it in a recital in the spring of 1971, along with "Our School Band" by David Carr Glover. It is unpublished.
Not sure of the year, but I'm pretty sure this is close to the time this piece was written.
(May 11, 2015) This little miniature has become one of my favorite pieces. I hope to include it in some sort of suite or collection. I have used it in church as a short offertory, It is dedicated to my student Jasmine Murray. I also suspect Jasmine won't be the only one to ask to play it.
This piece is now available at Piano Pronto through their Composers Community site! I am happy to be included with this group, and encourage you to check out all of the offerings there - by publisher Jennifer Eklund and the rest of the Piano Pronto Composers Community.
And at last, a "first draft" video by the dedicatee, Jasmine Murray. I think she's gonna get it. We'll do another video on a better piano at a later date.
(September 8, 2012) This is a transcription I made of the simple and beautiful song "Crepuscule" (Twilight) by the French composer Jules Massenet (1842-1912). This is a homage to one of my favorite sopranos of the early twentieth century, Amelita Galli-Curci (1882-1963) and to one of my favorite living pianists, Stephen Hough (who has also made a transcription of this song.)
Galli-Curci's recording was one of the first recordings of her voice that I heard and owned, and my 78 rpm copy (pictured below, with a link to a video) is still a favorite in my collection, Back in my college days, I often listened to this, and other historic opera and piano recordings, with my classmate Susan Flick. This transcription is dedicated to her, and this blog was originally posted on her birthday. Happy Birthday, Susan!
My mother, Helen French Robertson Moring, passed away in December 2010 due to complications from chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD). You can read my December 2010 post about her, and our musical connection, at my other blog here.
On July 6, 2011, I finally finished one of those projects that we had planned to do together. Mama wrote a song years ago, as a young girl. It may be better to say that she "made it up", since she could not read or write music. She played beautifully "by ear", however.
The name of the song was "In the Arms of Jesus", and there were never any lyrics, just the tune. A phone conversation with my late aunt LaVelle Langley in August 2011 confirmed this. Also, Aunt LaVelle recalls hearing Mama play it often, which is something that my brother and sister do not recall - understandable, since they did not spend as much time with Mama at the piano as I did.
I wanted to make videos of Mama's playing while she was still alive, but she had "camera fright", and arthritis got to her before the COPD-related dementia did. The touch of my Baldwin baby grand was too heavy for her to play comfortably. I promised her for years that I would write "her song" down.
When I was done, I decided to make a demo video to share with friends and family on Facebook. The original plan was to make another video for YouTube later and on a better instrument. This beloved Baldwin, a college-graduation gift from Mama and Papa Doug, has not been tuned since nineteen-eighty-something - one of the "downsides" of living in the country is finding a reliable tuner/technician.
In the end I decided to post the "rough video" on YouTube, and it was the only version up for a few years. After all, this is where I had most recently heard her play HER version, on this piano in this room, and this was the last opportunity I had to "film" myself playing there.
I have left her tune as is and recast it in "my style", rather than in the hymn-like chordal way in which she played it (much to the dismay of my brother, who still wants me to make a block chord arrangement). I have also retitled it "Mama's Song",
Why?
Because we all have different religious beliefs, but we all have - or have had - a Mama.
Here is the first video, made in the early morning hours after the piece was written.
On May 24, 2015 (the 26th would have been her 85th birthday), I finally made a video on the excellent Yamaha piano at Franklin (Georgia) United Methodist Church.
(September 12, 2013) "Clangorous but not 'bang-orous'" is the expressive marking for this piece, which is based solely on the C major and A minor pentascales (hand positions), and uses the pedal to blend the notes together in a manner similar to that of a carillon. A student near the end of Faber Piano Adventures Level 1 will be comfortable with this highly patterned and enjoyable piece, suitable for both girls and boys.
(November 18, 2014) This one is a little difficult to pin down. Is it New Age? Is it a nocturne? I like to think that it has attributes of both. It certainly does not fit the New Age mold as much as "Celestial Cloud". I don't think that it is as figuration-driven as the average New Age piece. I'm trying to work on pieces of less technically difficulty that still have a good bit of "my personality", and I think I succeeded here. A "nocturne in modern style", perhaps? Maybe.
This is the first of my work to be distributed by Piano Pronto in their Composers Community series! It was first made available at Sheet Music Plus under the title "Simply Sung", and I think exactly one copy was sold while it was there.
The original working title was "Dreams". Then it became "Simply Sung", and was sold through Sheet Music Plus under that title. When I moved it to Piano Pronto, the editor suggested I change it. I had already had "second thoughts" about the title, and thought it might be more appropriate for a compilation in the future.
This one was written at the piano during a break in teaching, and I put a "scratch video" up on Facebook right away. Response was overwhelmingly positive from my musical and non-musical friends. I have played this as an offertory at Franklin (Georgia) United Methodist Church, the scene of the video below.
I am a member of a music club that meets in Atlanta every other month. Adult amateurs and local piano teachers share music with each other, with the occasional violinist, violist, or even classical guitarist thrown in, I often play one of my pieces as a "warm-up" before my "main event" piece, and several of my pieces have been premiered there! The video below was made at the beautiful home of Clarice and Mason Belcher. (Clarice is learning the piece now. Perhaps I can get a video of her playing it later.)
My friend Van Martin, a freelance graphic designer as well as a guitarist and singer-songwriter, usually attends these meetings with me. In fact, he did the video shown above. He also produced the "ambient space" version of "Celestial Cloud" as well. This piece is dedicated to Van. We may work together to create a guitar version that he can play. At least I want to.
(April 8,
2003) Dare I say that this may be my favorite of all of my pieces, for several reasons? It is still one that I can listen to - and think to myself "Did I do that?"
It came to me in a flash of pure inspiration. It was written over a period of a day and a half, away from the piano, on a laptop computer while at work at a convenience store!
The piece needed only a little
bit of polish (cutting measures, at one point making two into one). I still have the old laptop with the original file on its hard drive, with the measures that I elided. It is dedicated to my college teacher, Susie Francis Dempsey, because from the beginning I felt it represented her and her style of playing. This is one of the most technically challenging of my pieces, one that I have to practice to "keep up" myself.
I gave the premiere on May 22, 2005 in a
studio recital at First Baptist Church on the Square in LaGrange, Georgia. This is the performance in the video below. Dr. Dempsey performed it on May 17, 2006 at a
luncheon for the Knox Concert Series and in a studio recital on May 20.
This piece was my "breakout piece" - the one that made me known outside of LaGrange. I sent copies to some of my pianist friends in some of the Yahoo groups, and it caught on. Adam Yoon made the first private recording of it, one I have on cassette and still treasure, since Adam is no longer with us. My friend Emily Moe sent it - and some of my other work - to pianist, author, and Liszt scholar Dr. Elyse Mach, who played and taught it for some time.
Roxanne Rea at Atlanta music retailer Hutchins and Rea also tells me it has "gone international" - she has shipped at least one copy overseas.
This is the first
of my pieces to be commercially recorded.
Pianist David De Lucia included it on his third CD, “Show Some Emotion”,
released in April of 2005. I can't remember if I sent the music to him, or if he heard Adam play it and got the music from him. I'm sure David will clarify this for me in the future.
The Romance was originally privately published, and was available from Hutchins and Rea in hard-copy form. Many of my piano-playing Internet friends have played this piece, and I have at least three private recordings by
them. Pianist Andrys Basten has also
recorded this - her performance (one I especially admire) can be heard at this link. (There is also a free mp3 download there.)
Here is a "picture video" I made, since the premiere performance was recorded in audio only. The people pictured in the video are various teachers and students whose friendship I treasure.
On August 27, 2005, I received a package in the mail from Susie Francis Dempsey - a video of her performing the Romance in a 2006 studio recital. Although I was there and made an audio recording, it had escaped my mind that her husband, Dr. Wayne Dempsey, had made a video as well.
I am fortunate to have video performances by Dr. Dempsey of two of my compositions.
Critic Steve Haufe said of DeLucia's performance: "Robertson's intense 3 minute Romance is a highlight. One is reminded of the Rachmaninoff Op.16,# 5; perhaps also touches of Faure Nocturnes; yet a fresh,"American" sound to my ears, simple, honest, uncloying emotion."
Critic Don Satz said of DeLucia's performance: "(Robertson's Romance) is unabashedly loving and tender music that DeLucia plays with heart-felt dedication."
(March 28, 2011) Written more or less as a homage to Olivier Messiaen, this features a plainchant-like melody in the bass clef interspersed with phrases of the "Old Hundredth" hymn tune ("Doxology" or "Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow" - in three keys at the same time - in the treble. It is a study in tone and balance, blended together with lots of pedal.
It is dedicated to Jimmy New of Wedowee, Alabama, who was my piano teacher through much of my teenage years. (His wife is my cousin Johnnie French New, as well.) He opened my eyes - and my ears - to many twentieth-century musical styles. It may well be one of the least-understood of my pieces, but it is more than a little special to me.
This view inside an old Belgian church
could have been an inspiration for this piece.
Surely this organ once pealed out the "Old Hundredth" often.
(November 8, 2014) This work was written with a specific student in mind, a high school senior with an excellent attitude, stellar lesson attendance, far above average intelligence, and not much of a will to practice, (Bad pun, Will.) I purposely decided to write a highly patterned piece with an obstinately repetitious right hand line over changing harmonies. I knew it would be quick and easy to learn, and I knew that Will seemed to enjoy the "New Age" style of music.
When it was finished, I wasn't even sure if I liked the piece! When I sent it to my college teacher Susie Francis Dempsey, her positive comments caused me to view it in a more positive light, and it grew on me. A "scratch" video of the piece on my Facebook page (camera work by Will himself, the day he first heard it) really got a lot of positive comments, even from my non-musical friends. So here it is, in a later video on a better piano.
And here we have a video of Will himself playing it. If he didn't develop into a master pianist, I think I can say that we will gain an amazing veterinarian - unless he decides not to follow in his father's footsteps and change his major to something else. At which point he will become an amazing Else.
And last, but certainly not least, this piece (perhaps the oddest of my work) receives what may be the oddest treatment - this time on a vintage Korg MS-2000 synthesizer, giving it an "ambient" or "space music" feel. This was my first ever experience with a synthesizer, and was recorded on April 18, 2015. Produced by Van Martin.
This recording as well got a lot of positive comments among my Facebook friends. I haven't given up on the idea of writing more in this style - and perhaps doing electronic "re-creations" of them as well,
This is a 1980 performance of my Sonatina, op. 9 for piano solo. It won at the state (Alabama) and Southern Division level in the 1980 Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) Composition Contest. The work, in this version, was written in 1979 and dedicated to my teacher Susie Francis Dempsey, who encouraged me to enter. At the time, I had not had any formal studies in composition.
I have posted this for the benefit of friends and students. The work has since been "suppressed"; the first two of the movements being part of what is now "Three Moods for Piano", and the last two movements scratched.
This recording is from a 1980 recital performance, given at the Jacksonville State (Alabama) University Summer Piano Academy.
After winning this competition, I had a couple of composition lessons, but really didn't write anything of consequence for ten years. When I began teaching piano again in December 1989, my interest in composition was rekindled - this time with the idea of writing music for piano students.
(January 24, 2009)
Started at First Baptist Church on the Square in LaGrange, Georgia (while in between students) on my forty-ninth birthday and
finished five days later at home. I
first performed it the Sunday after it was written as an offertory at Franklin
United Methodist Church, at the funeral service for Robert Johnson, and at a
meeting of an Atlanta piano club. In fact, this was the first piece I performed at a meeting of that club. This
one rapidly became a favorite, and is dedicated to George Mann, an Atlanta-area pianist who frequently played my Arietta in recitals.
The title is taken from a song by Claude Debussy. It was written as an example of the French Impressionistic style, and was influenced by the work of Maurice Ravel. His Sonatine is a favorite work of mine and has been "under my fingers" for years. Ravel had a particular fondness for the upper half of the keyboard, and often asks for the pianist to play with both hands in very close proximity, if not literally on top of each other. There are passages of that type in this piece.
Some of my listener-friends also are reminded of the Van Gogh painting "The Starry Night". I'll take that thought, but the piece really came about through what I imagined from the title. It certainly doesn't sound like the Debussy song. It has become one of my "favorite children", and one I love to play often myself. It is one of the few of my pieces (thus far) to be recorded by an adult professional or amateur pianist other than myself. Utah attorney, patron of the arts, and gifted amateur pianist Chase Kimball recorded it for a privately-issued CD he made as a gift for friends, "Stolen Moments". Here is a blog post about that CD, from my other blog, "Under the Piano Stool", currently on hiatus.
There I am, between Leos Janacek and Harold Arlen. Wow.
The video below was made shortly after the piece was written, and I am in fact playing from an earlier version of the score. Although it sounds the same, I altered the meter from the first version to make the phrasing more apparent. The first version was originally in 2/2 time with quarter notes throughout - not really an inspiring view for the performer. I changed it to 4/4 with eighth notes.
“Argument" was
written in 1980 as an assignment for a piano pedagogy class with Dr. Susie
Francis Dempsey. We were to write a teaching piece and "give a
lesson" on it for the class. Oddly enough, this was the last piece I wrote
until 1990, when I began teaching in LaGrange. Maria Oliver Solomon gave the
first performance in LaGrange in the spring of 1991, if I recall correctly.
The two hands represent the two characters in the argument, passing short phrases
back and forth between each other. Both hands are never in the same key, and
rarely do they play together. In measures 5-8 and 21-24, they move apart, as
two people may move away from each other in a heated discussion.
The piece is dry, accented, and brittle. Rhythm should be exact and metronomic,
quarter note at 120. There is no melody per se, only rhythmic motives and
"chords together and opposed” (Bartok).
All single eighth notes are detached, quarters held for full value. The left
hand chord in measures 12 and 28 may be played with a flatted palm, rather than
five fingers. If the hand cannot reach, no problem - if any notes have to be
left out, better to leave out bottom ones than top ones.
Measures 15 and 16 exactly as written, with a sharp release on beat 1 of measure
16. Wind instrument players understand this concept better than pianists do.
The last two measures look very hard to play, but they are not. The right hand
plays forearm clusters on the black keys, the left on white. Pitches are
approximate. Start close to the top of the keyboard and alternate forearms down.
The last "chord" is all on the white keys.
The argument does not come to blows; a door is slammed (final chord) as one of
the protagonists leaves the room. Originally I had a double glissando here, but
young hands had difficulty doing this. I changed it to clusters when Maria
Oliver Solomon studied the piece, and in the end, this turned out to be the
"hook" that people remember the piece by. I think it is a more effective
ending than what was originally written.
The piece is full of crashing dissonances that young kids love to unleash themselves
on, but is short enough that it does not become tiring to play or hear. As for
the tone-cluster ending, it is "just enough" to take the piece over
the edge and give it a "risqué" element.
In the spring of 2005, a
student of Emily Moe performed this in recital in Chicago, Illinois, making
this the “farthest-away” performance of one of my pieces. Student Dylan Candelora performed it in the
spring of 2008, and I performed it in a recital in Roanoke, Alabama, in
September of 2008.
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