Walking Down the Hillside at Cortona, and Seeing its Towers Rise Before Me

For 2 pianos in 19-edo. Many summers ago, we were in Cortona, Italy.  It’s a medieval hill-town, with the main town being located high up on the hill, where the incline is very steep. There is virtually no area that can be said to be on “flat ground” of any sort. There are lots of stone buildings, tall and short, archways, narrow streets, stairways and alleys. While descending a set of stairs at one point, my gaze slowly ascended to glance at the top of one of the taller towers. This simple motion of ascent-during-descent inspired this composition. In it, aspects of the music ascend (for example, the height of the chords--at the beginning they are simple triads, but the end they are vast ‘skyscraper chords’), while other aspects descend (the “bass” of the chords).  Other kinds of [relatively] simple patterns control other parameters. There are 7 “descents” over the course of the piece, each one is more and more involved, and starts, and ends (”sinks”) lower than the last.