Fantasy for Carillon

Fantasy for Carillon was commissioned by Margo Halsted for her to premiere in September, 2009, at the 40th anniversary of the Storke Carillon at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

It is a celebratory work, a showy work in the best sense, with joyous descending and ascending scales and arpeggios and clanging clusters in the main sections, contrasted by passages of bass melody with upper 16th note broken-chord patterns.

Some of the compositional materials that are used to complement the bell harmonics are the octatonic scale and chords built in minor thirds. Suggestions are made as to the playing of the clusters, and the player may devise his or her own way of playing these.

The work should be played with much freedom, with time allowed for the decay of sonorities, and with much panache.