Slow Waltz
for chamber ensemble

to Liana, with love

Originally for piano (Composed in November 2023)
This arrangement was made in two-and-a-half hours on 9th December 2023. 

Slow Waltz, for ensemble (2023)

All That Jazz was composed as a piece for a cycle of Nocturnes which eventually became 'Facing the Night'. On reviewing the piece, I considered it to be sufficient as a standalone piece and as an exploration of highly chromatic jazz. Listen in for a quotation of a jazz standard! 

Cover Art: All That Jazz, M.Sani.

All That Jazz, for MIDI (2021-22)

The doctors didn't know what was wrong with my lumbar area. They said it was a herniated disk. Later it was found to be a diabetic complication that ate the nerves away from my lumbar area. Only 0.000000000000000875% of the population get this. i am very lucky. 

piano collection 15b: Herniated Disks Much Better Now.

This is an exclamatory music that is heightened mood and intense in feeling with pedal work and syncopation in both bass and treble clefs. 

piano collection viii

Piano collection 3 is from 2007 and was finished in 2010 after a hiatus for a couple years. The piece is already a step away from piano collections 1 and 2. 

Piano collection III

An early ditty from 2002, for piano solo. The second in the piano collection series. 

Peter Thoegersen - Piano Collection II a

In both movements of this quartet, each instrument gets assigned a repeating rhythmic pattern—sequences of notes and rests of equal length (say, all eighth notes). 

The first violin plays a pattern of 11 beats (6 notes, 5 rests), the second violin a 7-beat pattern (4 notes, 3 rests), the viola 6 (3+3), and the cello 5 (3+2). These patterns cycle independently.

One full cycle  takes 2310 beats—the least common multiple of 11, 7, 6, and 5.

But—crucially—beat durations vary.

Indeed, the duration of a beat depends on its density—meaning how many instruments are sounding at that moment (0 through 4). Each density appears a fixed number of times within the full cycle, independent of pattern contents assuming the constraints above. 

The twist: beat durations get adjusted so that each density—whether a silence, solo, duo, trio, or a full quartet—occupies exactly one-fifth of the total time of the movement. Rare textures are stretched, common ones compressed.

Thus the interaction of the parts effects an emergent large-scale rhythm.

Out of millions of possible combinations of patterns, one movement employs the set that yields the most unpredictable overall rhythm (in a precisely defined mathematical sense). The other, the most predictable.

As for pitch: each instrument traces a fragment of the cycle of fifths—in near standard tuning. The quartet plays 17TET, so with the octave divided into 17 equal steps, which makes a "perfect" fifth span 10 steps. Each instrument repeatedly travels through this cycle fragment, alternating between octaves. Individually, the lines sound diatonic; together, they form unfamiliar and highly dissonant verticalities—often stranger than even the most dissonant music in 12-tone systems.

Despite this microtonality, no specialized technique is required. If each player tunes their instrument to a slightly different “A,” then standard fingerings suffice—as long as they resist the instinct to tune to one another.

Waves, Winds, Mind - Mvt. II

composed 2016. This is a three part piano composition that is centric, yet atonal

Peter Thoegersen - Piano Collection #5

This is a composite of 12 tracks: 4 strings, 4 pianos, and 4 drumsets all in four different tempos and 4 different tunings. All instruments are playing the original Hypercube score! No added notes. 

Hypercube Version III (for Chamber Ensemble: Strings, Pianos, and drumsets)

Piano II #2

Piano II #3

Composer, mathematician, visual artist. 
Seeks collaboration with performers and choreographers.

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Waves, Winds, Mind - Mvt. II

David Victor Feldman