FRANK STEMPER, COMPOSER
Klavierstück I (1992)
for solo piano [3 mins.]
Premiered by the composer 8 August 1992 in the Viktorsberg Kloster, in the Austrian Alps
Opus 29 — A.S.C.A.P. work I.D. 410640856
SCORE
Opus 29 — A.S.C.A.P. work I.D. 410640856
SCORE
PROGRAM NOTES:
Klavierstücke (1992)
This short piece for piano was written during the second of three residencies I had in the Austrian Alps at the Viktorsberg International Composers Institute. Even though the composing studio I was using was a room in a 800 A.D. kloster, with windows that looked out across a huge valley to the Swiss Alps, I was having a tough time composing. That summer I was probably going through a stylistic change, and was trying desperately to work out the details. I can see this now in retrospect, but that summer I just figured that my muse was drying up, and I was a failure as a composer! Klavierstücke helped me through that period.
Every single piece I have written has advanced my own personal esthetic. Each has taught me something that changed the music that I would write after it. This piece was important to me, because as I was writing it, I realized that I was not, could never be, an experimental composer. I would always be just a composer, writing from my own instinct — from my soul and my heart. I suppose any discipline, any occupation, has a series of transformations as one gets closer and closer to understand what they are doing.
Klavierstücke (1992)
This short piece for piano was written during the second of three residencies I had in the Austrian Alps at the Viktorsberg International Composers Institute. Even though the composing studio I was using was a room in a 800 A.D. kloster, with windows that looked out across a huge valley to the Swiss Alps, I was having a tough time composing. That summer I was probably going through a stylistic change, and was trying desperately to work out the details. I can see this now in retrospect, but that summer I just figured that my muse was drying up, and I was a failure as a composer! Klavierstücke helped me through that period.
Every single piece I have written has advanced my own personal esthetic. Each has taught me something that changed the music that I would write after it. This piece was important to me, because as I was writing it, I realized that I was not, could never be, an experimental composer. I would always be just a composer, writing from my own instinct — from my soul and my heart. I suppose any discipline, any occupation, has a series of transformations as one gets closer and closer to understand what they are doing.
PRESS NOTICE
KLAVIERSTUCK I
—performed by Junghwa Lee
"Klavierstuck I (more properly, Klavierstück) was written in 1992 during the time Stemper was in residency at the Viktorsberg International Composers Institute in the Austrian Alps. His composing studio, situated above a monastery, gave the composer a feeling of isolation, which he has carried forward to this day given that he considers his music as strictly his own, and not part of any other group or trend. This two-minute work makes its case succinctly, evidencing the stylistic features found throughout Stemper’s oeuvre."
David DeBoor Canfield
Fanfare vol. 39, No. 1 2015
KLAVIERSTUCK I
—performed by Junghwa Lee
"Klavierstuck I (more properly, Klavierstück) was written in 1992 during the time Stemper was in residency at the Viktorsberg International Composers Institute in the Austrian Alps. His composing studio, situated above a monastery, gave the composer a feeling of isolation, which he has carried forward to this day given that he considers his music as strictly his own, and not part of any other group or trend. This two-minute work makes its case succinctly, evidencing the stylistic features found throughout Stemper’s oeuvre."
David DeBoor Canfield
Fanfare vol. 39, No. 1 2015