Inexorable

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Inexorable is the final movement of my Diatonic Triptych for Disklavier (mechanical piano). The work was composed in the summer of 2022. The work consists of seven independent voices, each in their own octave, which play only the seven pitches of the C diatonic scale (the “white notes” of the piano). For the first 210 measures of the piece, the music proceeds through all 5040 possible permutations of these seven notes in seven octaves, changing to a new permutation every 16th-note. In other words, the music is always the same (we always hear all seven diatonic pitches at the same time) but always different (never repeating the same voicing of those seven pitches) until we have heard these pitches in “all ways.” Moving through these permutations, the bass note ever-so-slowly rises as the music inevitably and unceasingly advances towards exploring and achieving every possible minute variation of these seven notes together. When this is finally completed, the final seven measures then find the voices all ultimately aligning on the 8 C’s of the piano keyboard.