About the creation

The suite for solo guitar to the Fruits of the Land (1981) consists of four dances and demonstrates the tonal richness and diversity of tone production methods contemporary music makes available to the virtuoso guitarist. The variety of flavors of the fruit, ranging from sweet to sour (tangerine to lemon, for example) is the associative idea for comprehending the work. The music evolves out of a process of diffusion from a few tonal centers to twelve, so that as the work proceeds the tonal color becomes progressively more dodecaphonic. The first of the 4 dances is prelude-like; the second is of a particularly rhythmic nature; the third is made up of fragments of fugal texture and moves somewhat ponderously, while the fourth is the sum total of the fragmented elements now combined and blended together.