Egg the First
One day while browsing around the music library at Sydney University, I spotted a score of somebody’s “complete oeuvre” which I at first misread as being their “complete oeufs“. The idea of issuing a set of “complete eggs” appealed to me (still does 🙂 ) and so when I started to write a set of short piano pieces shortly afterwards, they became the beginning of a series of ‘piano eggs’.
The Four-Egg Omelette comprises the first four of these ‘eggs’ and was written in 1994. The style is somewhat quirky and free-ranging, but quite dramatic in ‘Egg the First’ and ‘Egg the Fourth’. ‘Egg the Third’ is a waltz (“Sunny-side up”) and ‘Egg the Second’ is a short Interlude.
This recording is a MIDI realisation of ‘Egg the First’ (hence its somewhat heavy-handed approach with the accents). The key feature of this piece is setting a five-note ostinato in the left hand against a melodic right-hand part which ranges across a number of metres.
Other Eggs
The series of piano eggs continues. Other pieces in the series are:
- Egg the Fifth
- 2 by 4: Eggs the Sixth, Seventh, Eighth and Ninth, a set of two-part inventions
- Egg the Tenth, a stand-alone Interlude
- Egg the Eleventh