Game of the Centurya little chess-match background music
Op. 41for solo piano[~7 minutes]BOARD/PITCH MAP
This work is a musical rendering of the Byrne-vs-Fischer championship match of 1956. Its score maps
the 8x8 chessboard layout: vertically to the successive octaves of a 97-key piano; horizontally (a-h) to
8 of the 12 pitch classes. The remaining PCs are reserved to convey elements other than board-square
positions, especially the name/color of pieces either moving, captured, or checking.
GAME NOTATION
The Byrne/Fischer game progression is noted here in "algebraic" chess notation, shown between staves.
Each move-pair member is scored in one line, with measure layout as follows: #1, the moving piece;
#2, start/end positions (with interspersed reference to squares crossed); #3, pieces either captured or
checking, if any.
PIECE-NAME MOTIFS
Piece-identifing motifs parallel the phonetic content of piece names. Most of these present three types
(plosive, vowel-or-diphthong, sonorant) in mutually retrograded pairs: "king"/"rook"; "queen"/"knight".
One exception, "Bishop", applies that relationship to its own halves. In all cases, white-vs-black motif
pairs are cast in mutual inversion, with whites registered in octaves 2 & 4 and blacks in octaves 5 & 7.
MISC.
Finally, a startling coincidence: the game's move-count total reappeared as this work's opus number.
PERFORMANCE
Accidentals: this notation style is LilyPond's "forget"; every scored accidental applies exactly once.
Double-speed motifs (in phrase-measure #3): play only as fast as their patterns will be recognized.
End-of-phrase breaths: average length if after bar #2, 1 second; if after bar #3, up to twice that.
Online sources and a video (audio synced with page-turned score) are accessible as follows:
score, audio, video.