Le Tombeau Phrygien

Le Tombeau Phrygien, scored for piano, grew out of improvisations on a piano harp—with strings intact—which had been removed from a piano. It is also inspired by Maurice Ravel’s suite Le Tombeau de Couperin, written in memory of some of his friends who died during the Great War. (If you listen closely, you might hear a passing reference to another of Ravel’s pieces for piano.)

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Piano Score

How this piece was created

I improvised this composition at the keyboard, using samples of an August Förster piano and of the Brugge Concertgebouw. Cubase, Kontakt, and Altiverb were used for sequencing and recording, and LilyPond (with Frescobaldi) for producing the printed score. The real-time performance heard is one continuous take, with no edits other than normalisation of the final audio. A Kawai CA49 digital piano was used as the MIDI controller.