Music by Allen Fogelsanger

Canon by two pairs of oscillators; in each pair one oscillator modulates the other. Although they are carefully tuned they are subject to small random changes in frequency. Each oscillator produces notes by subjection to amplitude envelopes repeatedly sent from its own dedicated envelope generator. The progression of the piece is simple. In the beginning the envelopes have sharp attacks and randomly long decays. The decays are gradually shortened (though are still of random duration). Finally the attacks are lengthened. And lengthened more. Composed April 27, 2013, New York.

An improvisation by Allen Fogelsanger (piano) and Christopher Jacoby (manta touch-sensitive interface programmed for controlling sampling through Max) recorded November 30, 2012, in New York.

An improvisation by Nicholas Handahl (flute) and Allen Fogelsanger (piano) recorded February 15, 2013, in New York.

This is the last movement of Seven Simple Percussion Pieces for Apple's Synthesizer (2009), to which Jumay Chu set the dance Elisions. Elisions was performed December 9, 2009 at The Allure of Refinement: Music and Dance of Indonesia, a presentation of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. The other movements are online at http://www.armadillodanceproject.com/AF/Percussion/7SmpPercPcs.htm

The dance Glory and Rue: Street Dances was an evening-length work in three acts directed by Jumay Chu. It was presented March 5-8, 2009, in Ithaca, New York.

A live recording of a free improvisation by Sonia Megías, voice; Allen Fogelsanger, piano; and Tim O'Hara, string bass. The quiet parts echo the late music of Morton Feldman, but these are separated by dense and energetic sonic discourses among the players.

Recorded November 11, 2011, in New York.

Pitch material consists of bi-chords whose notes have frequencies related by one of the first five ratios of the terms of the Fibonacci sequence, i.e. 2/1, 3/2, 5/3, 8/5, 13/8. Each chord only changes one note from the previous one, but by modulation the set of possible pitches is infinite. Through this process one gets farther and farther from the starting key until the Da capo. Material was generated by improvisation. There are many many cutoff tones causing loads of popping.

All note onsets occur on a regular grid of 610 pulses squeezed into the 60-second piece. Percussion lines (different pitch shifts of the collision sound of a Newton’s cradle) provide an irregular meter and phrase structure. The most frequent collisions occur every 2 or 3 pulses, supported by another set every 5 or 8 pulses, a third set every 13 or 21 pulses, and one more set every 34 or 55 pulses, each set nested inside the next slowest one.

The overall effect is fun but a little unsettling. Composed June 2011.

In 2010 Cornell University decided to cut the $4 million budget of its Department of Theatre, Film dance by $1-2 million, primarily because its numerous non-tenured arts practitioners caused it to have unusually large expenditures falling outside its professorial budget. The dance area was particularly hard hit as its faculty consisted of one professor, four full-time lecturers and one half-time lecturer: within a few years it will be reduced in half to at most two lecturers and a professor. The dance major, which had existed since the 1970s, is being eliminated.

For Cornell's annual March concert in 2011, I wished to recognize the ending of an era during which the Cornell Dance Program produced many quirky and wonderful dances, and to note my own upcoming departure from the department. As Director of Music for Dance for twenty-three years I accompanied thousands of dance classes and provided music for hundreds of performances, and I attempted to encapsulate the range of my contributions, especially the essence of my playing for class, into music for Jumay Chus dance Track Changes. I call this musical work In Memory of the Cornell Dance Program.

In Memory is a passacaglia based on a very slow presentation of the bass line of Pachelbels famous and over-choreographed canon. The forty-six sections unwind over 24:32, touching a number of styles of playing I often used in class. The melodies hint at a tune not fully unveiled until the coda, Cornells alma mater, Far Above Cayugas Waters. The sudden recognition of the source of such disguised and distant variations was a common stimulus I provided for two decades of dance students.

The dance Track Changes, accompanied by the music In Memory of the Cornell Dance Program, was performed March 11, 2011, in the Schwartz Centers Kiplinger Theatre, by dancers Yasmin Fouladi, Jessica Gutchess, Julia Hellmich, Sara Keene, Stephanie Tan, and Alison Zaid.