Till Then - Gestures II for Piano and Electronic Tape was one of David’s last finished compositions, written in 1972-1973 and premiering in May of that year by pianist Sally Christian on the Keyboard Concerts series in Fresno, California. The work is a wonderful take on Richard Strauss’ Till Eulenspiegal’s Merry Pranks, which provided the source material for the generated electronic sounds used in the piece itself, and lent the obvious musical quotations and playful title.
“If I had to describe my music…first of all, it’s Romantic. There’s no getting around that I’m very much influenced by 19th-century composers. I’m interested in writing concert music - music purely for the sake of itself, rather than music for TV, motion pictures, or popular music…I’d write music even if nobody ever listened to it…I write music for myself where I stand, my own emotional and intellectual interests. What I enjoy is the game, the manipulation of materials making use of meaningful sounds that somehow relate to each other. Writing music is like solving an exciting mystery. My whole attitude towards composing is a fusion of styles. I try to take the world of sound as it is today and not exclude anything.”
It should be mentioned that the use of “Till Then” as the website’s title exists for two reasons. First, it is exciting that pianist Donna Coleman will perform Till Then in February/March of 2023 in Melbourne, Australia nearly forty-seven years after its last performance—her desire to revisit the work provided, in part, the inspiration for this site. Second, Till Then, for this listener, has come to represent a summation of David’s works - a natural expression of his influences, style, and humor. In his own words…
Musicologist and colleague Allen Skei described David’s compositional process in this manner…
“He felt very strongly that for himself, a piece of music ought to emerge out of the requirements, the demands, the potentialities of the material itself; that a musical idea, a musical gesture ought to generate what follows. He did not believe for himself very much, in pre-conceiving, pre-establishing modes of performance - that is to say modes of performance within a work. He didn’t believe in establishing at the outset a matrix into which everything else ought to be forced. He wanted each piece, I think, to establish its own requirements, to establish its own structure, again, out of the need of the individual piece itself, out of the need of the material. It was for him a very nice way of working, a very good way of working. His work has a great integrity…a great coherence.”