wish (2020)
after Bach
for piano

This piece was commissioned for a project called “The Illustrated Pianist”, responding to stories from The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury. wish takes after the story “Kaleidoscope”, about a crew of astronauts scattered into space by their spacecraft’s sudden explosion.

The music is a kind of “erasure poem”, created by overlaying three different harmonizations by Bach of a same melody (“O Welt, sie hier dein Leben”), removing all the notes they have in common, and forming something new from the residue.

January 2021