Lewis: Harp Sonatina

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Description

Unusually for a work of mine, the Sonatina is neither pictorial nor programmatic, but is simply about the music itself and the instrument it is written for; it is in fact an attempt to contribute a substantial work to the largely neglected area of higher grade compositions of a non-folk nature for the instrument. Though of smaller range than the pedal harp and unable to play in as many keys, the lever harp has the ability to play in more than one key at a time by the tuning of groups of strings to different keys, something that is obviously impossible on the pedal harp. Thus the Sonatina is able to move from tonality in the first movement through atonality in the second to bitonality in the third.