Memories Now I can’t recall

for violin, cello, and piano (2014), c.4’

This short one-movement piano trio is based on “The Parting Glass,” a Celtic drinking song popular since the beginning of the 17th century, which features an almost exclusively pentatonic melody with just one strange, stray additional pitch, sung to the word “memory.” That lone divergence from pentatonicism seems a like an apt sonic metaphor for the imperfection and elusiveness of memory and it immediately triggered my own musical thoughts, hence the title Memory Now I Can’t Recall which is taken directly from a line in the lyric of the folksong.

Available on The Folk Tunes Project (Roven Records)
Performed by Roger Zahab (violin), David Russell (cello), and Robert Frankenberry (piano)