---

Programme Note

Composer note:

Chaconne for piano and four instruments was composed in summer of 2000 and is dedicated to Andrew and Barbara Imbrie. I have written a number of pieces that follow some sort of ground bass principal. Andrew Imbrie's music, lucidly constructed but full of free invention, suggested a return to this strict against free format. This time I wanted to choose a pattern as familiar to our times as the desending chromatic used in Bach's cantatas 12 and 78 (and more loosely in his D Minor violin chaconne) was in the 1700s. The pattern is shorter than its native habitat. Through a similar process of re-harmonization the piece gradually widens its focus.

— John Harbison