John Anthony Lennon
Les Productions D’Oz: 8 pages
Born in North Carolina, this composer has written many works for guitar and has had a lot of success with them, as mentioned in the Preface to this latest edition.
I was a little puzzled by the title, which is not discussed anywhere in the book, but the piece is ostensibly in Am, and in 4/4 but there the similarity to anything else you may have seen before ends, for it immediately opens with a consistent run of a mix of quavers and semi – quavers, which ducks and dives all over the fingerboard in a constantly changing rhythm, with a similar lower melodic line that again is always on the move and changing its rhythmic pattern. So even though the music opens in two voices it has you on your toes trying to cope with its complex, ever changing rhythms right from the start. The other thing about the melody line is that its opening phrase is based around a three – note phrase of A, B, and C. that moves around a great deal with some pull – offs before moving higher up the fretboard, in a very confusing pattern that again relies on repetition for its effect.
Without actually returning specifically to its opening theme, the work continues for a total of 78 bars, always changing, with an extremely complex rhythm, so that the player would find it very difficult to get their hands around it, and also with the actual thematic material being often rather repetitive and not too memorable. It is advanced in difficulty, and whereas there are no doubt a great deal of players who might love this man’s music and the challenge this work gives them, I must be honest that I frankly found it very difficult and melodically not very interesting at all. But then again, I could be entirely wrong, and you may love this piece.
Chris Dumigan
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