Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Joel Veitch, Op. 28

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Who, you ask (and well may you), is Joel Veitch? The question does have answers, but all of them are either excessively concrete or excessively abstract. It is reductive to call him a composer, even though he certainly is one (by all means, poke around and find more). In any case, language fails -- nay, refuses -- to do its plain job by describing this. Where language fails, music may step in; whether it were wise for it do so is out of scope.

In February of 2010, something terrible happened. Terrible things are always happening, and terribleness-measuring competitions are right out, but it was the sort of thing that had to be urgently counterbalanced by a quantum (as Ian Fleming once did not say) of non-terribility. Hence this set of variations, based upon a tune chosen no more for its motivic possibilities than for its perfect silliness.

There are sixteen variations (numbered I -- XII and XIV -- XVII), the last of which is a "reprise" that serves as an introduction to the fugue. Further description would only provoke language to go on strike again.