The composer thanks Clare Hammond for her practical insights which have helped to make this score far more readable than it otherwise would have been.
The composer acknowledges the splendid work of his predecessors in the toccata-like tradition, among the most recent (and astounding) being György Ligeti’s Études pour piano and Elliott Carter’s Caténaires.
Cauldron is neither an étude nor a toccata. It is an expression of emotional states. The first state is super-hot and may be compared to the bubbling of lava which has just been released from entrapment within the earth. This part of the score looks on paper like a rapid moving of notes up and down the keyboard, but that’s not what we should hear. Rather, individual pitches are sounded and repeated and eventually moved a very slight distance up or down.
For example, the top note, E flat, is repeated six times before it moves to an F, and eventually an E natural. Similarly the bottom note, E flat, is repeated eight times before moving to D flat and then D natural. The two inner voices make similar motions. So we hear four horizontal lines bubbling intensively.
One cannot place a barrier in the path of lava, until it starts to cool. The cooling of Cauldron is not linear; twice the temperature seems to drop only to be superheated again. The third cooling leads to something more like stasis, with trills being a prominent feature. These give way, at long last, to something like traditional piano music, contemplative. Alas, the music then reverts to trills which themselves become super-hot.