Instrumentation: solo Bb clarinet

Length: 9:00

Year: 2017

About the work:

Relentless Night (2017) for solo Bb clarinet was inspired by Dmitri Shostakovich and born of curiosity after learning about his use of musical cryptograms to represent the initials of his name in his pieces. The opening motif of concert C to A is a transposed version of my own initials, “S” (Eb) and “C.” This minor third motive continues to play an important role in the harmonic world the duration of the piece. The dexterity of the clarinet and the harmonic language explored draw inspiration from jazz of the Gershwin era and solo woodwind repertoire of the early twentieth century such as Stravinsky’s 3 pieces for Clarinet and Debussy’s Syrinx.

The exciting challenge of the piece was creating a musical conversation within a single instrument, and marrying the many influences I absorbed as I conceptualized the piece. As the structure of the work revealed itself in my mind, it became obvious that the piece boiled down to two main musical ideas — one flowing and lyrical, and the other pointed, repetitive, and relentless. The pairing of the two opposites resulted in a battle of the forces throughout the course of the work that comes head-to-head in a rhythmic and quite literally toe-tapping finale.