for Mason Martens
Memorial 3 is for Mason Martens, a musician in the Episcopal Church as well as a music editor who passed away in 1991. His battles with clergy, choir directors and others in the church were legendary.
It was primarily because of Mason that I wrote a fair amount of church music which would otherwise be surprising because I'm not a Christian or even a believer!
The form of the work is a minuet and trio with coda. The near-atonal first and third sections show his difficult personality but the contrasting tonal trio, based on a fragment of one of his works, shows his more convivial side.