This rhapsody was my first composition in Leon Kirchner’s Harvard seminar. I was rebelling from the “strict diet” of atonality that Arthur Berger had enforced on my writing while at the New England Conservatory of Music. Kirchner seemed open to freer expression. I dared to write a romantic rhapsody in G minor. At the time, it was viewed as an imbecilic idea. Kirchner was surprisingly intrigued with my struggles structuring the piece. At one seminar, he said to the class he could take any of the student sketches he heard that day and finish them quickly in his office. But not my piece. He really wasn’t sure he understood what it wanted to be. I took that as strong encouragement I was on to something.

Duration: 9 minutes