Sometimes I have fun by taking pop music hooks and turning them into fugues. I made several of these back in April 2020 as a project I called Ludicrous Tonalis. These are some of my favorite recent examples. Download the score: Five Fugues Centerfugue Manic Fugue-day Sir Fugue Get Ur Fugue On Total Eclipse of…
Tag: 80s pop
Passacaglia Variations (are made of this) for cello duet (2008)
When I decided to write a duet for two cellos, I found inspiration in pop music from the 1980s. The bass line used in this work comes from the Eurythmic’s classic “Sweet Dreams (are made of this),” the video for which is notorious for its pantomime cello playing of the iconic synth solo. Download the…
Not Cool for tenor sax duet and fixed media (2009)
When I was asked to write a short piece (between 1 and 100 seconds) for two saxophones and pre-recorded audio, I had no choice but to turn to the 1980s for help. I played around with various iconic tenor sax licks found in my favorite pop bands of the period that used saxes (Huey Lewis and…
Songs My Radio Taught Me for marimba (2008)
Each of the five movements in this suite were inspired by various pop songs from the early 1980s. I decided to take short, memorable, and in some cases iconic, licks and hooks from these songs and abstract them, mutate them, hide them, and embrace them. For a while in my musical development, I shunned and…