Charles Shere:  Sonata: Bachelor Machine		1989
solo piano		back to list of works
score: 24 pages. Available from Frog Peak Music		back to homepage

This piece was completed November 10 1989 but composed mostly in 1983 and 1984 while working on (in fact, as part of) the opera La Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même after Marcel Duchamp's painting of that name. A long ballet dominating the middle of the second act, the center of the opera, was conceived as representing the mechanical workings of the Bride and her Bachelors, with solo material given, respectively, to violin and piano. This sonata is the piano material, lacking all other music (solo and choral singing and orchestral accompaniment) but fleshed out slightly with additional notes.

There are two intentions: to make an extended, somewhat virtuosic piece of music for solo piano, and to retain the arbitrary, quirky, stiff characteristic of Duchamp's conception. The part of the bachelor apparatus that is most present is the "chariot" or "glider," a contraption that comes and goes in a reciprocating movement, sounding its "litanies (slow life: everyday junk: onanism: buffer of life") and actuating an elaborate train of machinery which ultimately fails to strip bare the bride.

The three movements are called Cadre, Desires and Frustrations, and Action and Inaction. I wouldn't mind finding an English word for the title of the first movement, but nothing quite does what the French cadre does: framework, context, grouping...

The music of the Sonata can also make a fairly substantial Piano Concerto, a Big Concerto to complement the Small Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, but it hasn't yet been notated, except as part of the Duchamp opera. Perhaps one day.

Sonata: Bachelor Machine was first played by Eliane Lust, July 25, 1990, in San Francisco, on a wonderful program also including Debussy's Hommage à Rameau, Bartók’s Sonata, 1926, and Schumann's Davidsbündlertänze. What a night!

Score available from Frog Peak Music and from Lulu.com • Soundfile available from Vibedeck.com

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rev. 7/21/12