PROGRAMME NOTES
ALEXANDRU MURARIU (Romania, 1989)
Knots III (2024), for clarinet solo
ISCM Romanian Section submission
Knots is inspired by a throat singing technique originating from the northern part of Romania (Maramureș), a subgenre of the “Doină” called “Horea cu noduri”, which translates roughly to “singing in knots”. This piece is a third attempt to transpose into contemporary music this Romanian traditional technique that is slowly disappearing due to its complexity and demandingness on singers’ voices. Although it significantly resembles the well-known yodelling technique, its aesthetics and meaning are quite the opposite, as the Romanian traditional singing technique is rather used in sad songs.
ALEXIS BACON (USA, 1975)
In the Foreign Land (2018), for clarinet in B flat
individual submission
Joseph von Eichendorff’s poem In der Fremde is a portrait of a mysterious man who finds himself in a lonely forest as a thunderstorm threatens. The speaker’s parents are long dead, and no one in the forest recognizes him anymore. Robert Schumann chose the poem as the first song of his Leiderkreis Op. 39, one of my favorite Romantic song cycles. Throughout the course of the cycle, we never learn whether the forest is literal or figurative, as the singer’s emotional state vascillates wildly from song to song.
When Gregory Oakes asked me to write a work for solo clarinet, I wanted to explore both the sound of the clarinet as it is played in Romantic music, and the use of extended techniques and microtones. These sound worlds contrast, as mysterious air and rustling sounds alternate with pure arpeggios and romantic melodies. As this was my first composition to use microtones, I truly felt that I was in a foreign musical world.
In the Foreign Land is dedicated to Gregory Oakes, in gratitude for his willingness to explore sounds with me.
BARBARA JAZWINSKI (Poland, 1950)
Soliloquy (2017), for clarinet in B flat
ISCM USA Section submission
Soliloquy was composed for Esther Lamneck. The work is highly virtuosic, exploring idiomatic and colouristic characteristics of the clarinet in different registers and dynamic levels. It also attempts to create a sonic environment that bridges experiences from the composer’s own musical heritage that spans different continents and artistic traditions.
EMILY DOOLITTLE (Canada, 1972)
Gannetry (2021), for solo clarinet (any clarinet, or multiple clarinets) and looper or recording device
Scottish Music Centre submission
Gannetry is a graphically notated work for clarinet and live electronics, based on the sound world of a gannet colony. I’m fascinated by the rich interweaving of guttural sounds as tens of thousands of gannets nest, spar, soar, and dive. This piece was composed in tandem with Dawn Wood’s writing of her poem Gannet Rock, with my ideas for the piece helping shape her poem, and vice versa. Piece and poem can be performed separately, or interwoven in performance. Gannetry was commissioned by Ruta Vitkauskaite and the Modern Chants project for clarinetist Jo Nicholson, with funding from Creative Scotland.
JAN DUSEK (Czech Republic, 1985)
Unsent Letter (2019), for clarinet in B flat
Prague Spring Festival submission
Everyone of us has probably written or will write a letter that is important to us, but still decide not to send it to the addressee. Sometimes perhaps because the emotions it captures are too strong, other times because we are afraid of hurting that person. Whatever the message of the letter is at the time, we decide not to share it with anyone. Sometimes the letter stays with the sender and may be found many years later, other times it is irretrievably destroyed and forgotten. I have tried to infuse similar thoughts into this piece, to express strong emotions that could be either unpleasant, frightening or, on the contrary, too strong for the reader. And it could have been a declaration of love or, on the contrary, remorse, sadness, disappointment, joy or anger... I wanted the composition to allow for different interpretations, to give the performer the opportunity to embody the writer and to finish, to complete the composition in terms of expression. But in the end, I prefer not to send it to the addressee. It should therefore, for all its emotionality, remain very intimate, introverted, unsent.
The composition was commissioned for the 72nd Prague Spring International Music Competition 2020.
KOMEI ITOH (Japan, 1961)
OBJECTs253 (2023), for solo clarinet
ISCM Japanese Section submission
This piece was composed with the image of arranging various “musical objects” in the flow of time. I composed those objects using four musical elements: sub-tone passage, multiphonic sounds, sounding slap passage, and glissando. These are arranged to be generally symmetrical. I added two melodic objects to the middle and end of that series of objects. Moreover, I set up a prologue and epilogue. Each object is punctuated by a very light tongue ram. Three numbers “2.5.3” shown in the title are used on determining values of few parameters. Mr. Ryuta IWASE made the premiere of OBJECTs253 in March 2024 in Tokyo, Japan.
