Misnomer

Misnomer (2022)

3’00

I was originally approached by Katherine Breeden to write a piece for unaccompanied clarinet. I was given free rein as far as subject matter. Throughout our friendship, we’ve had a mutual struggle with being called by the wrong name so I thought it would be fun to write a piece about it. I was racking my brain for how to get this concept across with unaccompanied clarinet until I came up with the idea of writing a piece for “clarinet” but the performer doesn’t play the instrument in the traditional sense. I thought back to my time playing William O. Smith’s “Four Duets for Four Demi-Clarinets” and his other piece Epigrams, which utilizes movements of demi-clarinet, and was inspired to write a piece that uses demi-clarinet. Like in Epigrams, where the performer announces quotes that the movements are titled from, I decided to have the performer announce that they are playing a “clarinet” to harken back to the title of the piece, “Misnomer,” which is “a wrong or inaccurate name or designation.” I decided to divide the piece into three movements that utilize the upper joint demi-clarinet alone, lower joint demi-clarinet alone, and both together.

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