16 Jul Memoir

Memoir (2025, for solo piano, by James Rolfe)

Memoir is an hour-long piece composed for Halifax pianist Barbara Pritchard. Making a work coherent for listeners who may drop in for a few minutes or stay for an hour: this was a challenge I’d never imagined. Mulling it over, I roped together two of my favourite keyboard composers into one playful question: what would JS Bach’s Goldberg Variations sound like if they had been composed by Morton Feldman? It was fun to contemplate, but the piece refused to play along: it pushed back against both Bach and Feldman, unfolding in cascades of repetition and development, subverting its own theme and variations setup. There’s a diary-like aspect to its modest material, which is unassumingly melodic and diatonic, navigating time in discrete sections, like journal entries. The long duration spotlights the role that memory plays in how we hear music, gently unmooring our bearings, leaving us at sea with no land in sight.

Memoir was written at the request of pianist Barbara Pritchard, to whom it’s dedicated, in gratitude for her bringing my music (and that of many other composers) to the attention of curious listeners everywhere.