Some time ago, when I was teaching in higher education, one of my students from Cyprus gave me a book of traditional songs and dances from her country. It was a lovely book, with Greek text, photographs of performers and dancers, and many musical examples. Some time later I had the opportunity to write a set of piano duets and this book provided me with the melodic material – but unfortunately the student had returned home and I wasn’t able to find out what the titles or character of the tunes were, and so I simply used the tunes that I liked, thinking of it as a tribute to a beautiful country rather than a strict presentation of these characterful melodies.
The result was Cyprus Dances (it was originally called ‘Cyprian Dances’ but that can actually be misinterpreted) – four movements for one piano, four hands. The first performance was given in London by Derek Foster and Anthony Green, thirty years ago this year, and since then it has been performed by quite a number of piano duos, and also in the arrangement for string orchestra that I made later. It was a fascinating task to explore these melodies, which seemed to portray so many different moods, sometimes with some very complex rhythms, and using different modes and scales which created an exciting harmonic flavour.
The first movement, which I called ‘Round Dance’ is based on several melodic fragments, in a regular 2/4 time, and often using the characteristic scale with a sharpened fourth and a flattened seventh. The main idea is presented quietly and unaccompanied to begin with, and gradually other ideas are combined with it, slowly building up to a loud and busy texture and then ending more or less as it begun, but with an unexpected fragmentary afterthought.
The second movement I called ‘Lament’ and it features a highly expressive, yearning melody with an irregular metre. The unusual nature of its scale gives rise to some rich chromatic harmony as the piece develops, though there are moments of lighter texture too, where the melody, in the lower part, is simply punctuated by swirling five-note figures above.
Back to a regular rhythm and pulse again with the third movement, which I called ‘Lullaby’ and which features a simple flowing melody and a gently rocking accompaniment. Often the melody is in the middle of the texture, and accompanied by what might be bird-calls and insect noises at the top of the compass, and also sometimes presented in canon as well.
Then the last movement, which is certainly the trickiest to bring off, though I can assure you it is possible! It’s a kind of mashup of several tunes, all of which are characterised by unusual metres such as 3+2+2 or 2+3+4. Called ‘Rondo’ it is very lively and the main theme, mostly in semiquavers, returns several times flanking interludes of different kinds, but never letting the pace drop. As the piece gradually builds to a fortissimo climax the melody is ‘coloured’ by being doubled at the fifth or twelfth above which gives an extra layer of harmonic richness. I really enjoyed writing that bit – rather like a piano with a ‘mixture’ stop as on the church organ.
A few years after I wrote the piano duet version, I did an arrangement for string orchestra, which was a great opportunity to enrich the textures even more, and this arrangement has been played by several string groups.
You can find a scrolling score of the piano duet version here (a live performance by Ian Ray and myself)
There’s a digitally made scrolling score of the string version here
And more details of how to obtain the music here.