Eaves, Will - Four Diptychs

Four Diptychs is a suite for solo piano that comprises eight short works in pairs. The component pieces speak to each other, without interpenetrating, in the manner of a diptych. A “diptych” is a two-panelled painting, but in the ancient world it was also the equivalent of an exercise book: two wax plates facing each other on which the student (or adept) wrote or drew with a stylus. The wax could then be reheated and the work remade. Ideally, the effect of listening to the diptychs should be that of hearing something at once deliberate and carefully spaced, but also sketch-like, evocative, playful. They are somewhere between studies and preludes in scale and intention.