Nancarrow meets Mahler. The pianist Lois Svard (who also commissioned my Desert Sonata) asked me to write her a work she could play on a Disklavier, an acoustic but computer-MIDI-operated piano. It seemed cruel to enslave a live pianist to the mechanical tempo of a machine - except in the context of a march, in which one is expected to fall in step anyway. So I wrote a march. A "march in the style of Kyle Gann" is a contradiction in terms, since 4/4 is my least favorite meter (17/16, 35/24, and 41/16 are so much more inspiring). So I wrote it in the march style I know best, that of the Austrian master Gustav Mahler (1860-1911). Certain historical grievances are hereby redressed, since the high romantic style of Bruckner, Mahler, and Strauss pretty much excluded pianists from participating; none of those three wrote significant piano works. And the Disklavier, capable of 16 notes at once, and 26 if a live pianist is playing as well, offers an orchestral approach to the piano, with pretty much all registers in play all the time, that I think would have made the piano a more congenial possibility for Mahler. The orchestral-textured high Romantic piano piece with cross-rhythms of 13 against 11 against 9 is one of those historical genres that couldn't exist when its time came, and is here presented with a feeling of better late than never. Mahler knew all about the Youth's Magic Horn - Das Knaben Wunderhorn - but he couldn't have envisioned the Youth's Magic Keyboard.

- Kyle Gann

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