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The three pieces that make up Quasis appear, at first glance, to have little in common, but nothing could be further from the truth. Although the dances and song–dances come from disparate parts of the world — Poland, Austria, America — and from different periods, Avi Schönfeld unifies them stylistically and brings them up to date through his own musical language. He also juxtaposes contrasting forms and compositional procedures — song–dance versus dance–song; intimate, introvert small-scale mazurka v. epic, extrovert waltz; improvisation v. more structured writing — and in so doing portrays different human temperaments. His aim in ‘Quasi Blues’ was not so much to write a traditional blues number as to create a link between his own compositional idiom and the characteristic elements of the blues.
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Music example, Mazurka (pdf)
