Hammers was composed in 1990. At the time I was teaching in Port Hedland, Western Australia, and the isolation from my usual city-based musical contacts and resources enabled me---and in some respects forced me---to focus my attention on specific aims in the compositions of this period. Hammers is the most substantial of the pieces composed in Hedland, both in length and in the compositional rigour with which the ideas are presented. I did suffer one major hurdle---I am not a pianist, and I did not have access to a player who could handle the required level of virtuosity in order for me to "workshop" the piece. I did however have free access to a grand piano (often stored in 40+ degree heat!) on which I could try out the essence of the work, albeit at an extremely slow tempo and minus the fiddly bits!
From the outset I had in mind a lengthy quasi-improvisational work of considerable technical difficulty for the player who commissioned the work---Roger Smalley. Smalley's capabilities on the piano are world class, and he is a leading exponent of the contemporary repertoire. In many respects I felt that I could write almost anything I wanted with the certainty that he could play it, and that I need not feel shackled to a particular maximum level of difficulty. This may give the impression that Hammers is gratuitously difficult---in fact this was not the intention, but rather it is a personal celebration of the possible! As it turned out, when the work was completed there were only two or three notes that had to be changed due to physical impossibilities. I attribute this to the fact that the work was composed at the piano, and is therefore eminently suited to the layout and physical limitations of the keyboard, and of course to Smalley's extraordinary ability as a performer.
In terms of the nuts and bolts of the piece, it is divided structurally into a series of contrasting sections, though it is played and scored as one continuous piece. Often a new idea will be introduced, worked on to the point of caricature, and then discarded in favour of the next idea. In this respect perhaps it is a comment on the very nature of artistic "fadism", where predominant fashions seem to come in never-ending waves, only to inevitably pass (though this analogy certainly didn't occur to me at the time!) The work is certainly concerned with continuums---for example in the range of its rhythmic and textural contrasts, and its full use of the keyboard. The title seemed quite appropriate in its obvious reference to the piano mechanism, but also in its references to the manner in which the player is required to "negotiate" certain phrases. For those interested in greater analytical detail, I have presented a short analysis of the work and its particular use of pitch sets in NMA magazine (Vol 9).
Prior to the expected first performance, I entered Hammers into the Jean Bogan Prize for Solo Piano Composition. The work was successful in winning the award for 1991. As a result it received two "premiere" performances: the first was by Roger Smalley in Perth in October 1991, and the second was by Julie Adams in Newcastle where Hammers was presented as the prize-winning work.
© Stephen Benfall, Perth, June 1999.
May be freely used in programmes.