This work, as with several of Barry's pieces, exists in a number of versions; it was originally written in 1979 for two pianos.'Ø' for piano quartet is an exploration of ornamentation (the "bending" of an existing melody) and an etude in co-ordination (the problem of playing exactly together). In this piece, because the ornamentation becomes the melody, its traditional function as decoration is cancelled.
Gerald Barry (b.1952)
