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Caprice no. 11



Caprice no. 11 is an unabashed celebration of the arpeggio. It doesn't invite the kind of subtle music-making that many of the others do, however, it is not purely a technical exercise either.

One thing I admire in this piece is the harmonic rhythm and flow, created out of large building blocks (one chord per measure). Rhythm is another way to control the musical flow. At the beginning, each measure has a period at the end: a full quarter note. At measures 10-16, the last beat of the measure follows with continuous eighth-notes, which creates the musical equivalent of a run-on sentence.

Although this piece is simple enough, measures 17-18 and 23 pose a real challenge because of the precarious shifts. In each, I found that besides the obvious challenge of hitting the right note, I also tended to try to leave it early - even if I nailed it. As I work through these caprices, I find that even in the simpler ones, Campagnoli usually manages to throw in some monkey wrench just for the extra challenge!

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