REVIEW:
Jeremy Gill basically took both approaches (reinventing Bach and rebelling against him) with his collagelike Nearly Complementary Invention with Quasi-Canonized Bach.
– Philadelphia Inquirer, 21 January 2015
PROGRAM NOTE:
After composing a basically canonic second flute part to Bach’s original from the Allegro of his BWV 1033 sonata, I discovered that my counterpoint “complemented” the original in the 12-tone meaning of the word, by including the two pitches he doesn’t: C-sharp and E-flat. Serendipitously delighted, I wrote an invention that complemented the now dueling flutes in other ways. The piano part compacts the notes of the continuo into several chords that I transposed a tritone away (the most distant, hence complementary, key), and I devised a piano affect that was dreamy, improvisatory, and seemingly meter-less, to complement the driving, toccata-like character of the flutes (the pitches of this piano fantasy are the complementary pairs of those of the flutes, such that the notes Bach uses most frequently I use least frequently, and vice versa). I offer this little invention to Mimi Stillman and the Dolce Suono Ensemble (with my compliments) in celebration of 10 marvelous years, and wish her at least as many more as there are Cs in my canonized Bach (145, as it turns out).