Capriccio, 1954

This short and most ingratiating piece is the earliest for piano in Adler’s catalog of published works. It is a bright and cheerful piece that has lost none of its freshness since it was composed nearly seventy years ago.

Besides its happy spontaneity, this piece has several other qualities to recommend it: it is one of the very few Adler pieces that can be played well by an intermediate-level student; an advanced student could pair it effectively with another short Adler piece, for instance playing it immediately before “Thy Song Expands My Spirit”; and for an advanced player, it could make a perfect recital encore. Its ABA structure is apparent on first hearing to a listener who might also leave the performance whistling its main tune. The Capriccio is tonal and triadic with modal touches and frequent mild bitonality.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of this piece is its rhythmic spontaneity, changing within individual measures and from one measure to another, leaving the listener’s foot unsure when to tap. The opening melody in ⅝ constantly shifts its “beat” placement from 2+3 to 3+2 and back again (see ex. 2.1). Other rhythmic shifting comes from changes in meter across bar lines. Within ninety-two measures, there are fifty meter changes! They provide a perfect opportunity for a student who has not yet encountered mixed meters to do so in thoroughly appealing circumstances.

In 1970 the American critic and composer Virgil Thomson rather wordily observed, “Indeed I think you will find, if you listen to American music performed by American artists, that a very large part of what has been composed over the last forty years assumes the existence, whether or not this is overtly present at all times in the sound, of a steady continuity of eighth-notes, on top of which other metrical patterns, regular and irregular, lead an independent life.”