I compose, conduct and play the piano. I trained in the Classical style and my music drove the move into Romantic music, expanding the symphony, the piano sonata and the string quartet.
The situation, the work, the outcome. Ranked by how much the work proves.
I learned to control how my music reached the public: hold works back for impact, hire the hall myself, frame new pieces among proven ones, and give patrons an exclusive period before publication.
From the 1810s I studied older music — Gregorian chant, Palestrina, Bach and Handel — and built its polyphony, church modes and Baroque devices into a new late style of composition.
