Percussion Keyboards Strings Winds Mixed Ensembles Electronic              

Acacia Variations
for toy piano and whistling

Work no. 80
2016

Paused...

    In 2011 I composed a piece called Many Worlds Game – Spoon, for toy piano and toy percussion. It was structured as a video game with seven levels. It had a graphic score supplemented with six melodies in traditional notation, to be played at certain points during the levels. These melodies became the basis of several satellite pieces over the years, and Acacia Variations is probably the most successful of them. Different variation techniques were assigned to different segments of each melody; the piece traverses a chart with all the melodies using various paths, changing textures every time a new segment is encountered.

    Although I've received many compliments on the beauty of the music, the piece was too difficult, largely because of the requirement to whistle the long melodies during the performance. I was told that at one point, someone was so frustrated with my piece that they composed their own toy piano and whistling work to perform instead! So in 2021 I made a version of the piece for alto flute and piano.


    Acacia Variations for toy piano and whistling – PDF score  Acacia Variations for alto flute and piano – PDF score


    Creative Commons License

    Except where otherwise noted, content on this website is licensed
    under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

    Artist Statement

    jashiin@jashiin.com