The basic tune here was made into something like a sonatina form*. The idea is something like a Scottish fiddle reel, but with lightly contrapuntal elements, and played here a bit slower than a reel so that I can get most of the notes right.
Tomintoul is a place I’m not picturing in my mind at all, but rather the bleak high road that connects it with Cockbridge. While Scotland is celebrated for its beauty, there are many places in that land that I don’t find beautiful at all, which is true of anywhere, I suppose. Japan, for instance. And of course Canada.
In April of 2025 some of the tunes—thankfully a minority—I wrote were rumps, to be filled out later—in this case a full year later. I think this might have been that day that I noticed that I had lost 5 pieces, and couldn't find them, so to keep up with my (entirely self -imposed) schedule I wrote 10 that day, some of which had to be sketched, since I really didn;t feel like it.
[*sonatina form, for me, is a sonata form with a tiny development or no development at all. I tend to both acknowledge and use typical sonata form, despite various reactions against it by my predecessors and peers, but I also play around with it quite a bit, perhaps in emulation of the great Haydn. I have less respect for people who don’t think form is important in music than I might otherwise.]
