Program Note:

Harp Trio was composed in New York City during August 1988. Hagen was between apartments and composed it in the mornings in an empty lecture hall at New York University. A year later, in February 1989, he made a few minor revisions during a residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Hagen incorporated harpist Marcia Dickstein’s suggestions and finalized the score in November 1989, during a residency at the Camargo Foundation, in Cassis, France. Hagen modelled the first movement structurally on the first movement of the Bartók 2nd String Quartet. The second movement is a binary form. The third movement lasts exactly sixty seconds and is a musical palindrome. The finale is a set of variations over a passacaglia. A synthetic scale (A-Bb-C#-D-Eb-F#-G) which is gradually “smoothed out” into a slightly more diatonic one (Ab-Bb-C#-D-Eb-F#-G#) generates the harmonic and melodic language. Two triads imbedded in the scale (F# minor and Eb major) serve as competing tonal centers. Hagen delivered the keynote address, entitled, "What I Learned from the Debussy Trio,” to the National Federation of Music Clubs convention in 1988, following the Debussy Trio’s premiere of the work.