New York-born Elliott Schwartz makes his home in Maine, where he is on the faculty of Bowdoin College. He favors music whose texture is formed from several layers, often loosely synchronized or unsynchronized. This work, written on commission from the McKim Fund in the Library of Congress, is a memorial to two friends, the pianist Andrew Wolf and fellow Bowdoin faculty member Gabriel Brogyanyi. Schwartz selected compositions which Wolf and Brogyanyi loved and enjoyed performing: Mozart¹s Requiem, Gershwin¹s Piano Preludes, Schubert¹s "The Shepherd on the Rock," and Monteverdi¹s "The Coronation of Poppea." Fragments of these pieces and a few others are combined with each other to produce new melodies. Schwartz says that it was only later that he realized that except for the Gershwin, these were their composers¹ last works. The notes that all of these piece have in common generated a seven-note row, which Schwartz also used to create new melodic forms. The composition is a touching one, and is a substantial work at over twenty-one minutes in length. ~ Joseph Stevenson, All Music Guide
