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I\\u2019m doing something today that I haven\\u2019t done in far too long: sharing a recording of a new composition in progress.

I\\u2019ve been working for some time on a set of piano pieces, all of them dances in one way or another \\u2014 and all of them, in one way or another, full of the feeling of entropy, full of things falling apart and things slipping away.

This particular one has much sweetness in it, but its main ingredient is ambiguity. Its different layers are centered in different keys, different places. They mesh so that a note which sounds unresolved in its own layer often harmonizes with what is going on in a layer above or below \\u2014 and then when that note resolves within its own layer, it must move away from resolution with respect to that other layer it seemed to agree with a moment ago. This means that the layers are always pulling against each other, entwined but tugging in different directions, and the music is always simultaneously both resolving and unresolving.

Of course, this all happens quickly, and it\\u2019s hard to hear all these little individual motions. Instead, it all blends together to give the music a restless, floating, perpetually suspended quality. The music does eventually find a place to rest, but it\\u2019s fleeting \\u2014 remember: falling apart, slipping away \\u2014 ah, but I\\u2019m giving away too much! I\\u2019ll let the music tell its own story:

\\nPaul Cantrell\\n
\\nSong For Lost Things (slightly rough version)\\n
\\nPaul Cantrell,\\npiano\\n
\\n\\u266b\\nDownload\\n(2:58 / 3.9 M)\\n

I still haven\\u2019t fully worked out the interpretation, so I\\u2019m calling this performance \\u201cslightly rough:\\u201d as I live with the music for a while, I\\u2019m sure I\\u2019ll find that I want to play some things differently. It may come as a surprise, but even with the things I write, I still have to go through the same careful process of interpretation, figuring out how the music works, and how to play it just so.

There are nine pieces in the whole set, of which I\\u2019ve posted this one and four others in rough form: Entropic Waltz, Dance for Remembering and Forgetting, Cradle Waltz, and Disembodied Dance. Wish me luck learning the rest!

Update: Here\\u2019s the score.