Faye-Ellen Silverman

Settings

Year: 1978

Duration (in minutes): 9 1/2'39;

Difficulty: High (professional)

Category: piano

Publisher: Subito Music Corporation

Description: “Settings” is a rhapsodic, one movement work in four large sections plus an introduction and coda. Written shortly after the end of an important relationship, it uses angry chord clusters and plucked strings to make its points. The opening is chordal in nature, and leads to the slightly faster first section, which contains references to these chords. A slow, more lyrical section follows. This section, in turn, leads to the fast scherzo-like third part. This latter section, the fastest of the four, combines rapid passages with held chords, which prepare a restatement of the introductory material in expanded form. These chords form a transition, in turn, to the fourth section – the slowest and most lyrical of the work. “Settings” ends with a coda, which refers back first to the first section, then to the chordal introduction. Motivic relationships exist among fast sections (one, three, and coda), the opening of the chordal parts (four basic chords are used) and, to a more limited extent, between slow sections (two and four).