Premiere: 22 April 2006 at the Boston Conservatory, Boston, MA
Mary McClelland, clarinet
Duration: 8’
Instrumentation: solo clarinet
Performance Note:
As with Ives, Protestant hymnody was a formative influence on my musical development. I grew up hearing (and singing) everything from the classics of Watts, Cowper, Wesley, and Crosby to the (sometimes) delightfully anachronistic meddlings of James McGranahan, Homer Rodeheaver, and Mrs. C. H. Morris, as well as much that falls somewhere in between—qualitatively, at least.
These simple melodies (for there is nothing simple or innocuous about a Wesley or a Cowper text) have become a part of my subconscious; oftentimes I have found myself humming snatches of hymns and gospel songs in unexpected places (airports, subways, and classrooms, to name a few). However, until these Tropes, they rarely figured prominently in my concert output.
Each of these movements can be described on an elaboration of a different aspect of a given tune. The first is derived from the WEBB (“Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus”), which itself is one of the melodies that figures prominently in the music of Charles Ives. Here the tune is distorted and treated to some Bartók-esque chromatic displacements and sequential developments; the final twist at the end comes as a surprise.
The second section is a meditation on the tune LEONI (“The God of Abraham Praise”), which itself is an arrangement, by Meyer Lyon, of a Jewish synagogue melody. The clarinet intones and then rhapsodizes on the opening five notes of the hymn; this spacious atmosphere is alternated with a second section that gradually takes on something of a klezmer aspect.
The finale is essentially a descant on the hymn tune MARTYN (“Jesus, Lover of My Soul”). The clarinet opens with a soaring lyrical melody that is contrasted by an angular chromatic motive; the two themes alternate in a series of subtle variations until the final statement of the languorous opening material.