This little piece is an eightieth birthday present for my good friend Georg Katzer, whose music I have come to love and admire since I met him in 2007. A Toye is a sixteenth century title, mostly found in music for virginals, used to mean a light, whimsical piece, sometimes dancelike in character. The dedicatee‘s name was often contained within the title (e.g. ‚The Duchesse of Brunswick‘s Toye‘ by John Bull) – and as he or she was usually an aristocrat, and Katzer is definitely an artistic aristocrat, I decided, with affectionate irony, to use the somewhat deferential ‘Mein Herr’. Well, he is German isn‘t he!
Gwyn Pritchard
(Programme note for the first performance at Randspiele Zepernick, September 2015)