One of the early pieces I commissioned, while still a student at The Eastman School of Music, was from William Penn, who was on the Eastman composition and theory faculty at that time.  These Preludes were premiered on February 8, 1975 in the Donnell Library Auditorium, New York City.

This was a period of great experimentation for me: one-handed rolls, separate dynamics in each hand, “sequential stickings,” (using the mallets independently, or in numerical sequence to play passages, rather than alternating hands in the traditional manner), various roll textures and types, new mallet sounds, etc.  There were a host of new possibilities that I was developing, but few original pieces composed yet for these techniques and textures. Along with the 9 Preludes I commissioned from Raymond Helble beginning in 1971, the 4 Penn Preludes (1974) are an historical document – almost a catalog of these new techniques and sounds as they were being developed.

The first Prelude is a string of freely-performed passages, speeding up and slowing down; the second, a single “melodic” line with interjected chords; the third, a comical odd-meter jaunt; and the fourth, a machine gun hail of notes, all over the keyboard.  Instead of the traditional slow-fast-slow-fast plan, Penn chose slow-slow-fast-fast.

-LHS