Twelve New Etudes for Piano (1977–1986) is a piece composed by William Bolcom (b.
1938), awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1988,[1] while he was teaching composition at University of Michigan.
[2] The set is "new" relative to Bolcom's first set of Twelve Etudes for Piano (1959–1966; released on Advance FGR-14S in 1971[3]), and was intended for and dedicated to Paul Jacobs, who died before the composition was complete, and thus the finished set is dedicated to Jacobs, John Musto, and Marc-André Hamelin.
[4] One of Bolcom's goals in composing the New Etudes was the fusion of tonal and what he has called "non-centered" or non-tonal elements..."a musical speech that is at once coherent and comprehensible and in constant expansion.
"[4]They are composed in a language that brings together elements of tonality and dense chromaticism.