In Duple Phrases

Composer's Note:

Two-note slurs. Wrists down/up. That’s it.

This is the rather fanatically applied premise and modus operandi for In Duple Phrases.

In its single-minded, ‘duply’ sculpted gestures, the piece pursues a course delineated by three tempos which establish contrasting territories: ‘reticent, yet insistent’ (tempo 1), ‘agitato; declamatory’ and ‘appassionato; gritty and percussive’ (tempo 2), and ‘rough; fleeting; in fits of activity’ (tempo 3). Tempos 1 and 2 alternate often during the first sixty-or-so bars of the piece, with tempo 3 (additionally marked ‘inventious; faltering’) entering late in the game and taking charge of its own exclusive, headlong space from bars 63 to 88. A final phase of the piece returns to the alternating tempos 1 and 2, concluding with the ‘neumes’ of tempo 1 getting hypnotically ‘stuck’ before taking on a final line of ‘weeping’ phrases (marked ‘patetico’).

Aside from two sonically expansive phrases in the last appearance of tempo 2, and the final tranquil bow out of the piece, two-note phrasing is the exclusive ‘rule’. From this strict limit, the challenge was to explore what pianistic variety and expressive breadth could still take place.

In Duple Phrases was premiered by pianist Thomas Stumpf on February 27, 2023 at Tufts University, as part of Stumpf’s recital “Brahms and Brand New.”