This music was meant to be very simple for fairly beginning students, and I wrote it in the key of C major. I’ve always liked the sound of this piece. It’s one of my favorites. But it has never been particularly popular with my students, so I just forgot about it, Last night I thought about revamping the whole thing.
The rest of the story:
I transposed the theme from C major to B flat major, then I repeated it with the right hand up an octave.I wrote a more complicated figure in the left hand for the repeat. Then I modulated up a major third to the key of D major. My feeling about my own music is that this should be totally peaceful, very relaxed and quite slow. I immediately thought of water. Imagine being on a sailboat on a calm day, in good weather.