Trio for Strings No.3

The movements here are all tripartite and follow ye olde tonic-dominant pattern in their shifting tonal centers (Largo - F; Scherzo - C; Lento - A; Presto - F). The Scherzo breaks the temporally-balanced mode by virtue of the fact that I lost track of where I was while composing and shifted to the dominant (and an entirely different set of tone-row permutations) a full sixty seconds before The Plan ordained it: during the Trio. Add to this the fact that an entirely different minute is consumed by a mirror section in what a traditionalist might be tempted to think of as the relative minor, and one will be tempted to ask why even create The Plan in the first place? Good question! No answer!

Another hilariously ridiculous obsession regarding this piece concerns my Compositional Life Plan's demand that every eighth work be a string quartet: meaning my very next composition, Op.64, must be one. But deciding to make Op.63 a String Trio seemingly skirts violation of another one of my odd principles: that my output must be varied and balanced among various forms. Publishing two simultaneous works for strings alone makes me nervous. No matter that back-in-the-day, great masters routinely published six or a dozen sequential works of identical form and thought nothing of it. No matter that countless successful and popular artists spend their whole lives writing essentially in only one form and for only one ensemble. No, I must be rigorously fair, varied, eclectic and balanced in my output - or risk obsessive self-flagellation. Go ahead: laugh at the poor, tortured creature. ;p

As for the Trio itself: I rather like it. Despite all that.