Piano Sonatas

View all pieces in this project

Most of my projects have some unifying element, like my pieces that respond to ragtime, or hymn settings, or tuning experiments. I began the piano sonatas project in 2026 as a way to write (or collect) pieces under an umbrella title that aren't intend to form a set or a unified project, to push back against my own familiar ways of composing—to try new methods (or old ones, as the case may be, in this instance a return to pencil and paper, familiar from my teenage years) and to break my habits of form. The focus is on discontinuities, on pieces that attempt neither to be distinct from nor similar to each other, that try not to belong with anything else. See my Minifesto before the piano sonatas blog post for further elucidation on these concepts.

Piano sonatas grouped by concept, technique, etc.

Fragments

Pieces that exist as actual (abandoned) fragments or as intended “fragments.” The idea is to push against completion. See this blog post (and also this one) for more musings. Sonatas include No. 1 and No. 3.

Of course, fragments are different from (though they may be related to)...

Very short pieces

I’m also interested in writing complete pieces that push extremes of duration. While most of these pieces tend toward miniatures or otherwise small forms, some of them are really, really short, like No. 3.

Very long pieces

On the other hand, while I’ve written plenty of long pieces in the past, I’m fascinated by the idea of pieces that are so long that form dissipates. What would happen, for example, if a piece never ended? If I never planned on ending it?

Knock-offs

In other words, pieces that respond to specific pieces by other composers—not itself a new concept by any means, but I’m being much more aware of what I’m doing with this project. No. 2 and No. 4 each responds to a specific movement from Prokofiev’s Visions Fugitives, while I No. 5 on Kurtag’s Microludes.

Randomness

Using random numbers to generate pitches to get out of comfort zones: No. 3.

Systems

What do number games sound like? Or other types of systems? See the fourth movement of No. 5.