Emergent behaviours in five long-term collaborations for clarinet

Collaboration between composers and performers can lead to decisive mutual developments in creative practice. Instrument-specific explorations involve the performer in shaping the musical substance of new work, enhancing their understanding of their own resources. Anton Stadler’s resources, including the development of the extended basset clarinet, had specific influences on the music Mozart wrote for his instruments. Alan Hacker’s widening of the clarinet’s palette, including the revival of the basset clarinet, led to specific developments in the music composed for him.

This research investigates how specific new instrumental resources have been devised, refined, and integrated by me and five composers in contexts of emergent collaboration over an extended period. I have developed a multiphonic resource of small-interval dyads, previously underexploited in the literature, which runs through these collaborations. Their coherence and their utility as a pitch reservoir have made them useful in the formation of musical structures and as a basis for further explorations.

Richard Barrett’s interference uses a wide range of anecdotal resources, some of which were originated spontaneously in our working sessions. His Flechtwerk for clarinet and piano uses dyad repertoire to create virtual polyphony and shape large-scale pitch structures. Rebecca Saunders uses dyad repertoire for clarinet in A through several chamber and ensemble works. Her bass clarinet solo Caerulean uses a new palette extrapolated from dyads available for the bass clarinet. Aaron Cassidy’s early metallic dust uses instrumental decoupling technique in a non-clarinet-specific manner. Later works employ tablature techniques, while his most recent works amalgamate tablature and sonically-based procedures. Evan Johnson’s writing uses collaborative material primarily as a background rather than explicitly. Justin Hoke uses audio recordings as a basis for collaboration at a distance and privileges instrumental resources which unfold in time.