For An Actor: Monologue for Clarinet (In A)

Description

Clarinet in A — For an Actor: Monologue for Clarinet (1978) owes its inspiration in large part to the intensely personal ethos with which the clarinet is associated in my mind.xa0 To me, the instrument in its contemporary usage suggests an incredible gamut of gestures, dynamics and emotions.xa0 Accordingly, in Monologue, the player assumes the role of a virtuoso actor who, by purely musical means, goes through a kind of wordless “monodrama.” Though not literally in sonata form, the parts of Monologue nevertheless roughly parallel that form, consisting of: exposition or unfolding in two sates; development-disintegration including a cadenza; coda echoing the opening materials. The work was commissioned for Da Capo Chamber players by Laura Flax, who first performed it on May 10, 1978 in Carnegie Recital Hall in New York City.