Sonata "Scorsese"

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For Solo Piano

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Duration: 5 mins approx. 

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Composer's Note

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This piece was inspired by Martin Scorsese’s Academy Award-winning picture, The Departed. In the movie, two characters from similar backgrounds infiltrate opposing organisations (the police and the mafia) as double agents.  Rather than looking to illustrate the two-sided nature of both men, I was more interested in “cutting” my composition like a film: beginning phrases in unexpected places, as if moving from scene to scene. Outbursts of aggressive material are intended to represent the sudden and realistic acts violence shown in both The Departed and in other films by Scorsese, whilst the harmonic language of the music is intended to be (at times) slightly reminiscent of the scores of Bernhard Herrmann, who worked on Scorsese’s Taxi Driver.

 

The exposition and development sections of Sonata “Scorsese” look to capture the tension and nervous energy of the two men in The Departed as they operate in constant fear of being revealed for what they are. A love triangle in the film - between the two men and a police psychiatrist - is then depicted in a jazz-influenced passage which precedes a brief recapitulation in the edgy style of the opening.

 

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