The title refers to three instruments, three movements, and three ways of treating musical time. The tone of the work is serious yet as playful as the title suggests. The first movement, Ratios, opens with a series of seemingly unrelated ideas in tempo ratios of 3:2 and 4:3. As the movement proceeds, the ideas develop, transform, and superimpose in increasingly wide spirals. The slower second movement, Cycles, is a fantasy built on the strict scaffolding of an omnipresent, diatonic cantus firmus...

I Ratios - II Cycles - III Phases