Four-disc box set, plus 20-page booklet with notes by Sarah Cahill.
Includes unlimited streaming of Eighty Trips Around the Sun: Music by and for Terry Riley
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
A Fandango is a lively Spanish dance—the most famous in the classical repertoire is from Boccherini’s Guitar Quintet in G major (and the most famous reference is Procol Harum’s “light fandango” in Whiter Shade of Pale). The opening chords of Riley’s Fandango on the Heaven Ladder contain the kernel which generates the entire piece. The extroverted Fandango theme morphs into a slinky pianissimo melody and undergoes permutations in various keys ranging from a funky bass groove to Lisztian virtuosity. Riley says that the concluding quote from the last movement of Beethoven’s “Tempest” Sonata was unintentional.