Desschant (2016)

I wrote this duo for Bryce and I to play, at his suggestion. Though I imagine he thought (hoped?) that I would never actually follow through. I wanted it to be short and tricky but ultimately great fun to perform, as collaborating and playing together with friends is for me, one of the great joys of being a musician.

At the time I had the inspiration to write Desschant, I had been arranging some of the Ligeti piano études for my ensemble, Eighth Blackbird. So the Ligeti scores were just always lying around open on my piano. The first étude, Disorder, is incredibly difficult - an intricate puzzle of accents, voicing and speed. I have never performed it myself, but have hacked through it plenty of times just for my own enjoyment, always trying to wrap my head around how I WOULD practice it if I ever DID decide to actually learn it. For some reason on that day, it occurred to me, that the best way to really learn Disorder would be to practice only the accented notes so you could get that into your ear and fingers. And once you were really able to play it at tempo that way, then you could start filling in all the notes in between the accents. But of course, the accented notes on their own would create their own irregular and melodic tune. I started playing around with practicing Disorder this way, and soon got distracted because I thought, well, it would be great fun to write a piece that used this idea but where I can choose the pitches!

So I composed the weird, little chant-like melody that is only heard in its entirety at the very end of Desschant, with all the notes filled in and played at a very fast tempo by guitar and piano together. The whole piece was written entirely in reverse. So I finished it by writing the opening of the piece which is of course the outline of the accented notes of the melody which you hear only at the very end.

Desschant gets it title from, descant - meaning a song or melody, as well as comment or discussion on a subject. The word is derived from the Latin discantus, as well as the medieval French, deschant. Being that I simply can't help myself when it comes to puns or wordplay, I decided to add the extra 's'.

Desschant is dedicated with admiration, gratitude and affection, to Bryce Dessner.

To purchase, contact Lisa at kappy1974@gmail.com.