PROGRAM NOTE:
Written to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, Valse variée pour N. B. uses a melody by Robert Levin that is a musical cryptogram of the name of the conservatoryʼs founder, Nadia Boulanger. I combine Levinʼs melody (which uses a French ciphering system employed by Fauré and many others) with a more recent ciphering scheme devised by Arthur Honegger, a favorite mid-century Swiss-French composer of mine. These two cryptograms (by Levin and myself) remain (mainly) distinct in my waltz, such that the cello plays Levinʼs NADIA while the piano accompanies with mine in its first half, and the cello plays my BOULANGER while the piano accompanies with Levinʼs in its second half. All four cryptograms occur, at their original pitch levels, in a brief coda.