ABSTRACT
The piano music of both Joseph Haydn and Franz Liszt forms the background to John McCabe's two most substantial piano works to date, the Haydn Variations and Tenebrae respectively. Due to the multi-faceted nature of McCabe’s substantial oeuvre for the instrument, any exploration of McCabe's piano music is likely to produce a different result each time, since endless possibilities seem to be invited and encouraged. McCabe demonstrates equal affinity in his own performing towards the music of, for example, Haydn and late Liszt. Tenebrae, while of comparable length to his earlier Haydn Variations, is at once McCabe's magnum opus for the piano, a monument of twentieth-century piano literature and yet his most personal narrative. In contrast to Tenebrae, McCabe's early Variations of 1963, his first large canvas for piano solo, is much more classically constructed.
