Azure Stone (the new violin piece)

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a white album cover with a polished piece of lapis lazuli; the words "azure stone" appear in the lower right corner

There comes that time in every creator’s life when they have to stop working on a piece and ABANDON it to its AUDIENCE. Thus it has happened with the new violin piece, “Azure Stone.”

I knew it was about ready to be finished when I found myself practicing TASK AVOIDANCE by designing the album cover (left), but after I kept futzing around with a couple of harmonies (GESTALT > SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION) I finally decided that it would have to do.

Some notes: The title comes from the section of the epic spam comment for which I had groaned out some ABORTIVE ATTEMPTS at a choral masterpiece, and in the end I just decided to keep the title. (Makes for a nice album cover, too.)

Structurally, the piece is episodic rather than developmental. If there’s any organizing motif, it would be the sixteenth-note arpeggios in the piano’s right hand and octaves in the left, and the recurring half note/quarter/quarter pattern in the violin.

It is demandingly slow. I added the instruction “A little rubato would be appropriate” after I set Finale’s “Human Playback® Style” to Romantic and was struck by the computer’s newfound sensitivity to my music.

So, here is “Azure Stone,” for solo violin and piano:

If you would like to see the score: PDF.