Amaryllis

Description

Alfred H. Pease was a pianist and composer active in the United States in the later nineteenth century. Much of his output consisted of piano pieces and songs played in homes and salons of the time. The date and circumstances of this Amaryllis have not been confirmed. Note that it is a different piece from the Amaryllis well known in Japan, Henri Ghys's Air of Louis XIII.

It is in E major and 4/4. It lasts just under three minutes with 1,398 notes, more than eight a second, a dense piece. The range runs from D1 to A7, nearly seven octaves, reaching almost to both ends of the keyboard. It is written in the manner of a nineteenth-century concert piece, racing across the whole keyboard in brilliant decorative passages.

It is rated advanced. It asks both for accuracy in fast figures spread over a wide stretch of the keyboard and for a melody that stands out from them. Lower the playback speed well down in the busiest passages, and use the hand colours to see which hand holds the melody and which the decoration. Cut the hard spots into short A-B loops and raise the speed gradually towards full tempo. The lowest note, D1, and the highest, A7, need an 88-key instrument.

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