Home | Late works | Autobiography book
Below, you will find some details about the compositions written after Opus 78 (2024). Details about compositions Opus 6 to Opus 78 are shown outside this website, in Chapter 11 of my music autobiography book at:-
https://archive.org/details/my-life-in-music-5th-edition-e-book-2025.02.12/page/50/mode/2up.
The few earlier compositions are detailed in Chapter 9 of the same book; you will not find Opus 3 (Rondo) and Opus 5 (Rondo-Scherzo), because I was unhappy about them, and I withdrew them from publication.
Opus 31. This is not a late composition. It is a re-worked version of the original Opus 31, which was on YouTube at https://youtu.be/tT Ut jA6Z10. In 2023 I posted another, partly incomplete recording, (made with a mobile phone of me playing); it is unlisted at https://youtu.be/mLIzyWEPegU. In 2026, I decided that the Prelude needed a fresh recording, and on 7th October 2026 I completed recording it again. Whilst playing the piece, I made some small improvements to the notes in a few bars, and posted Edition 2 of the work on sheetmusicplus and on sheetmusicdirect. I also made a new YouTube recording which is at https://youtu.be/Iz10fz-ggag, and I made the previous two recordings unlisted on YouTube.
Opus 79. This Prelude was recorded as an improvisation in August 2025. The sheet music was published on 2nd September; the YouTube version was created on the following day.
Opus 80. An Intermezzo, recorded as an improvisation on 14th September 2025, and completed on 20th September, when it was published as sheet music. It was recorded on 26th September and published on YouTube on the following day.
Opus 81. The first 24 bars of this Prelude were recorded as an improvisation on 22nd September 2025, and the work was completed on 12th October. I recorded it on 26th October, and published it on YouTube on 27th October.
Opus 82. This Etude was recorded as an improvisation on 25th August 2025; the sheet music was completed on 17th November and published the following day. the YouTube soundtrack was recorded on 17th November, and the full video recording was published on 19th November.
Opus 83. This Waltz was improvised on 4th May 2026, I did not work on it immediately, completing it for publication as sheet music on 19th May. Recording was delayed until 11th June, because I was working on Opus 84 and Opus 85. I worked on the video production for YouTube, completing it two days later.
Opus 84. The first 32 bars of this Prelude were improvised on 12th May 2026. The remaining 24 bars were not ideal, and I created them, partly by improvisation, up to 31st May, when I published the sheet music. I played and recorded the final version on 13th June. I created and published the YouTube version on 17th June 2026.
Opus 85. This work started as an improvisation on 1st June 2026, and was completed as published sheet music on 5th June. The melody line was almost unchanged in the published version. I played and recorded it on 8th June, and also created the YouTube version on the same day. At first I thought that it was a Prelude, and it could be, but friends suggested that it reminded them of an operatic song. Hence the new title, Song Without Words.
Opus 86. I improvised the first 31 bars of this Nocturne on 7th July 2026. Bars from 32 to 40 I discarded, because they were of poor quality. Over the next week, I gradually extended the work, to 80 bars, composing a section at a time. I disliked the last page of the completed work, because it was not sufficiently like a nocturne. On 13th July, I re-wrote the last 20 bars, completing the sheet music on 14th July. I published the sheet music on the same day. I made the YouTube recording on 7th August 2026, taking clips from mixkit.co for the vision track.
Opus 87. This was a very unusual improvisation, which I recorded on 16th July 2026. Unusual, because it was in a different style from all my other compositions, apart perhaps from Opus 29 and Opus 63, neither of which has, at the time of writing, any published sheet music. Unusual also, because the sheet music is without bar lines and with no time signatures (reminiscent of Erik Satie’s Gnossiennes). Opus 87, called ‘In the Clouds’, I was able to produce as sheet music, because it is only 4 minutes in length, and has far fewer notes than the other two similar works. I was able to create the sheet music in a few days – an acceptable time. The work is modern, broadly in 20th century rather than 19th century style, but still a classical and tuneful work. It is not atonal or minimalist. I created the video version on YouTube on 31st July 2026, using a beautiful photograph of clouds, which allowed me to display the sheet music, line by line, at the centre of the photo. As usual, I made use of Sibelius software to create the sheet music, employing artificial time signatures, such as 31/4, hidden to so that the pianist is not aware of them. As far as Sibelius is concerned, each line of music is a single bar, but the bar lines are hidden from the pianist, giving the impression that the entire work is a single very long bar. This allows the player to employ a degree of freedom of expression, which would be inhibited by the presence of regular bar lines.