Take me: A piano sonata in 3 innings

Piano Sonata No.2
for solo piano (1996), c.10’

Take Me is a piano sonata in three parts (innings or movements, depending on your frame of reference). It was created for and is inspired by the romance of Jennifer K. Allen Cooper and Jonathan Allen Cooper celebrated publicly in a ceremony of matrimony on September 28, 1996 at the now defunct Moran's, a 19th-century restaurant in Manhattan’s Chelsea.

Jeri and Jon are hopelessly addicted to sports in the same way that I am hopelessly addicted to music. I’ve frequently used my answering machine to propagate recent musical discoveries; their answering machine broadcasts a baseball game. It should be said here that the concept of a foul ball or a dugout is about as alien to me as the concept of parallel fifths or modulation is to them. Therefore, an attempt has been made in Take Me to find solutions which can work both musically and, if you would, sportsically. The music takes as its point of departure the song “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” and the keys of A(llen) and C(ooper). The sonata is expositionless yet monothematic, that is to say the melody of “Take Me Out To The Ball Game” is never quite stated literally, but serves as the exclusive theme from which all the other material in the sonata is developed.