homage to mahler (no. 1 of four romantic piano pieces)

As its title suggests, homage to mahler draws on a late 19th-century Mahlerian melodic and harmonic world, and indeed the opening motif, which dominates the piece, is a quotation from the closing bars of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde. Like the other three pieces in the set of four romantic piano pieces, it was composed in 1985 directly in pen, hence the frequent crossings out and rather provisional notation.