Variety is the spice of recital, and there's no easier way to accomplish this than the mini-suite. Tiny dabs of color and movement built to contrast one another, there are plenty of stellar examples (such as Little Suites by Lou Harrison and Leon Kirchner) and today's Suite is one of the best. While the great Roy Harris is primarily known as a symphonist he did whip up a CD-full of piano pieces, most notably his Piano Sonata, op. 1 (named by Hunter Johnson as American piano music's "Declaration of Independence") and his two sets of American Ballads. I'd like to submit my vote for his best piano work as his Toccata, but luckily for Forgotten Leaves his Little Suite is a hair's-breadth close second (and most certainly not the first loser).
The first movement shows off Harris's mastery of both singing lines and resonant modal harmonies*. While the melody seems simple enough, the clanging voice-leading underneath is never the same across its six iterations. After each scale, Harris rings the low bells and holds them with the middle (sostenuto pedal), allowing the pianist to change the pedal for the upper chords freely. The effect is gorgeous, the kind of movement that elusive middle pedal is made for, though I'm not sure how you can use the una corda pedal at the same time you use the other two.
Now, before y'all's cry foul about that third movement being spread across two pages, notice that the first page's portion is only two lines long, and the fourth movement is only two lines long. Therefore, dear readers, one could simply put "Slumber" under "Sad News" and everything would be dory of the hunky persuasion. However, "Children at Play" just isn't profound enough for a closer, so shush. "Sad News" makes good use of a slow 7/8 and wavering, harp-like, clashing chord movement. Harris was a lifelong student of Renaissance music, and the last two measures of "Sad News" display such sweet-'n'-deft harmonic counterpoint Fux could faint. "Children at Play" bounces between D major and B-flat major in the left hand while the right sticks to the former, though harmonic variation slips in as fast as a two-year-old drops one toy to play with another. Methinks Harris was a big fan of 7/8 in all its subdivisions, and if he intended the Suite as pedagogical music young students may have more practice than they want in store for them. Despite the shallow sonority of the movement it's actually the most difficult to perform, putting the pianist's skill at hand separation to the test. Thankfully things slow down for "Slumber", bringing us back to the world of chorales. The simplicity here is quite deceptive, its gentle departures from functional tonality ornamented by pinging fifths that suggest an endless breadth of emotion.
Harris was a pioneer of that brand of broad, polytonal lyricism that would become the American national classical language in the 40's and 50's, but works like the Little Suite and the Toccata show why he did it better than pretty much anyone else (except Copland, of course). His harmonies rang deeper and truer than the rest of the pack, and talking about them is no substitute for hearing them, and Geoffrey Burelson made a meal of the Little Suite and the rest of Harris's ivory ticklers on his CD for Naxos. As the whole Little Suite isn't even four minutes long I don't see the harm in the copyright infringement of me including his performance below, and only a cold-hearted orb would shut down these delightful morsels.
Harris was a pioneer of that brand of broad, polytonal lyricism that would become the American national classical language in the 40's and 50's, but works like the Little Suite and the Toccata show why he did it better than pretty much anyone else (except Copland, of course). His harmonies rang deeper and truer than the rest of the pack, and talking about them is no substitute for hearing them, and Geoffrey Burelson made a meal of the Little Suite and the rest of Harris's ivory ticklers on his CD for Naxos. As the whole Little Suite isn't even four minutes long I don't see the harm in the copyright infringement of me including his performance below, and only a cold-hearted orb would shut down these delightful morsels.
~PNK
*Yes, yes, I did notice how the tune devolves into "Joy to the World", and no, I'm not putting this article off until Christmas just to make that reference more cute, thank you very much.
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