Prelude and Fantasy

I wrote Prelude and Fantasy in 1973 as a third-year student in Composition at the University of Toronto. It lay buried in a drawer for 50 years. Recently (February 2025) it came up in a conversation with William Beauvais. I had always believed that William had introduced me to improvisation in the early 1980s. At that time, we played several concerts that included improvisation and recorded a commercial cassette that was once available for sale at several outlets, including the Canadian Music Centre. To my surprise, William told me that he had been first inspired to improvise by my student composition Prelude and Fantasy. As a gesture to our long history, I retrieved my old score and recopied it, using Dorico, with a few small revisions (reflecting my fifty years of experience as a composer). Guitarists often complain about the difficulty of my music. I guarantee that Prelude and Fantasy can be played by an undergraduate guitarist — even one who was majoring in Composition!

I don’t have a recording yet, so the accompanying audio is Dorico playback.