chaconne (c1981) (no. 1 of four piano pieces)

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This work is a 3-page ground bass with variations, written on three staves like a trio sonata, and the score is a facsimile of Reddy's manuscript. Reddy may have begun ‘Chaconne’ as early as 1978 because there are 26 pages of ‘Notes for Chaconne’ amongst his papers, which are saved together with four handwritten memos, one of which is addressed to ‘Anthony’, and apologises for being late home because Eliot Carter’s Piano Concerto was being played at the Proms. It was in 1978 that Charles Rosen gave a (rare) performance of the Carter at the Proms, and in that year Reddy was lodging with one of his teachers at the Royal College of Music, Anthony Milner. The ‘Notes’ show detailed preparation for what eventually, around 1981, became a three-page work of which two versions have survived. One is an autograph copy that was clearly used for performance, because it has traces of the kind of black hard-back performance books that Reddy pasted copies of his scores into when playing them. The other is a neater fair copy in black ink on manuscript paper headed ‘Chaconne’ with ‘Berceuse’ written next to it in pencil. This is the version reproduced as the present facsimile score. On the final page of the autograph of no. 3, ‘Nocturne’, he lists the three pieces completed so far and puts ‘19?’ next to Chaconne, and so even he wasn’t sure exactly when he completed it.