Fourth Doctoral Concert - 'Folk' Clarinet

‘Folk’ Clarinet Fourth Doctoral Concert

Lucy Abrams-Husso, clarinets

The topic of Other musical influences on contemporary Finnish and American clarinet compositions is the topic of my fourth doctoral concert. More specifically the influences of folk music, sometimes referred to as ‘ethnic’, ‘global’, or ‘vernacular’ music. Using the term Other rather than “non-Western” or “non-European”, I mean to reflect the general oppositions that composers, performers, musicologists, and theorists have created, for centuries, in art music performance and scholarship to differentiate not only source material but also attempt to divide art by race and class. What is “western” art music if not ‘not eastern’?

My aim is not to analyze accuracy or authenticity of appropriated material, nor do I hold that borrowing from other musical practices is merely a complimentary gesture that simply reflects mutual respect and creative curiosity. I think focusing on accuracy or authenticity quite often becomes an exercise in identifying levels of ‘otherness’ rather than understanding what it means to make music in different ways, from a performer’s perspective. Most often appropriation is neither an inherently offensive gesture nor harmless artistic enrichment.

It is my opinion that it falls on the lap of the performer to recognize, explain, and understand source materials in compositions and to reflect that understanding in the musical and textual communication with the audience. It is my hope that these program notes can not only enhance understanding and appreciation of the works performed today, but also recognize the Other elements in these compositions.

Kimmo Hakola Diamond Street (1999)

Kimmo Hakola’s solo clarinet work Diamond Street (1999) is his fourth clarinet work from the 1990s that was heavily influenced by “oriental global music”[1]. Whereas Capriole (1991) and loco (1995) include far-East folk styles, the Clarinet Quintet (1997) and Diamond Street (1999), are influenced by the Eastern European folk music, klezmer.

Klezmer is an instrumental Ashkenazi Jewish musical tradition that is characterized by its tone, cadences, and ornamentation. Klezmer music includes traditional dances and solemn songs as well as improvisations that can be highly virtuosic or soulfully expressive. As a young clarinetist, I was always anxious and intimidated when family would ask at holiday gatherings if I could play klezmer. Despite its familiarity, the style of sound, the vibrato and the improvisation were uncomfortably different from my early classical clarinet training. It is ironic that my first experiments in klezmer, or klezmer style, have arisen through this contemporary Finnish clarinet composition.

At the top of the score, Hakola indicates alla klezmer (‘towards’ or ‘in’ a klezmer style) and the composed music contains syncopated rhythms, glissandi and grace-notes that are characteristic of klezmer music. Vibrato is indicated in two specific moments in the score, and the modal-like scales also create a klezmer-style sound. Like the composer himself, I ultimately found musical inspiration in the recordings of Giora Feidman, as well as recalling the style and sound of the traditional Jewish songs I experienced growing up.

This preparation method - relying predominantly on my own ear, personal experience, and experimentation - has led to a very personal interpretation of Diamond Street. I find that each of my performances of the work is slightly different, particularly my ornamentation and vibrato. Though antithetical to typical classical music performance practice, where preparation is most often designed to standardize execution, variance is standard performance practice in many folk music traditions, including klezmer.

1“Hakola Clarinet Concerto; Diamond Street; Verdoyances crépuscules.” Gramophone. Available online: https://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/hakola-clarinet-concerto-diamond-street-verdoyances-crépuscules. Accessed 30 April 2022.

Pia Siirala Three Clarinets (2022) [World Premiere]

I am grateful to my friend, violinist and composer Pia Siirala, for composing the work Three clarinets (2022) for this doctoral concert. Siirala researches the personal song tradition of the indigenous Sakhalin, Kamchatka and Chukotka peoples of North East Siberia. The personal song is an integral part of the personal identity of these indigenous people. Given at birth to every child, the personal song becomes as fundamental to the person’s being as their name or the sound of their voice. The personal song tradition provokes questions about the root of musical thought, how and what we hear as music, and the role of the subconscious in musical expression.

The personal songs themselves are stylistically and harmonically unique. They are characterized by gliding pitch and horizontal harmony; the songs do not maintain a tonal center, however there is a type of harmonic awareness as demonstrated through repeated motives and the relationships between notes. They also curiously sound constantly in the middle, without a beginning or end. When recalled, they seem to start and stop suddenly, flowing from the subconscious. Sometimes a person might also use a drum to accompany their song, imitated on the clarinet at various moments during this work.

Using composition as a research method, Siirala created Three clarinets using parts of the personal songs of four individuals from Chukotka: Neshkarultin (b. 1945) from the village of Konergino, Raughtit (b. 1945) from Sirenniki, Koravye (b. 1935) from Keperveem, and Vonne (b. 1940) from Us Belaya. After transcribing recordings of the personal songs taken during her field trips in 2009, 2016 and 2017, Siirala composed Three clarinets combining specific musical parts of each personal song, her own musical ideas generated through her research of this indigenous tradition, and the sound qualities of the bass, E-flat and A clarinets.

Like with Diamond Street, my preparation of Three Clarinets came through constant experimentation with sound quality and articulation. Also, like Diamond Street, I find that each performance is slightly different depending on how I hear the music on a given day. I relied heavily on the field recordings to get a sense of the musical, timbral and personal qualities of each song, but the work is not a transcription. A clarinet is not a human voice. The recordings and western-style notation serve only as a starting point, as Three Clarinetsultimately becomes one’s own personal song.

Eric Mandat Folk Songs (1986)

1.    Spirited; as if from a distant Appalachian Hill

2.    Heavily, with a fuzzy, unfocused, breathy tone

3.    Expansive; as if hurtling through space

4.    With devotion, like a prayer

5.    Like a Flamenco dancer with St. Vitus Dance

Eric Mandat composed the rarely performed Folk Songs (1986) for himself for his final doctoral concert at the Eastman School of Music. He wrote in the program note at the beginning of the score: “I had been listening to a lot of different folk music recordings from non-Western cultures, and I was fascinated by the intricate intonations, the richness of timbres, and the subtle rhythmic variations which propelled the melodic cells in the music I heard.” Unlike the first two works, which each draw from a specific folk tradition, Mandat creates his own folk songs using aspects of harmonic, timbral, and rhythmic style that draw on any number of unnamed musical sources.

The resulting work is one of the most challenging works I have ever prepared. Each movement is composed in a different style and uses a different non-standard playing technique. Only in the final movement is the clarinet played ‘normally’. The notation is also predominantly prescriptive, showing the method for sound production. While the notation is clear, the non-traditional playing techniques in each movement are not intuitive. I feel surprisingly little flexibility in quality and character of the sound I produce, perhaps due to the newness of the playing techniques. Unlike the first two works on the program, I feel faithfulness to the score is necessary because following the instructions written are the only way to produce the musical sounds intended.

Compositionally, the works of Eric Mandat are also unique. He has been composing mainly for himself for over forty years, developing several playing techniques that have most often required direct instruction from Mandat himself, either in a masterclass or requiring a visit to Southern Illinois University in Carbondale where he has been clarinet professor for over 25 years. He is an experimental performer and composer outside the traditions of American east- and west-coast classical music.

 David Del Tredici Magyar Madness (2006)

1.    Passionate Knights

2.    Contentment (Interlude)

3.    Magyar Madness (Grand Rondo ‘A La Hongroise’)

            Bålder Quartet

Marie Stolt, violin

Andre Ng, violin

Vadim Grumeza, viola

Iida-Vilhelmiina Sinivalo, cello

The final work on the program is the most classical. I first encountered the music of David Del Tredici as an undergraduate at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in a project to record his stage opera Final Alice (1974-1975) for soprano, folk ensemble and orchestra. The recording was ultimately never released, but the experience stuck with me because I had never heard such a wide variety of influences interact in such a large symphony orchestra.

Del Tredici’s life and career have been largely influenced by both American coasts, having begun as a piano student at UC Berkeley and moving east for graduate study in composition at Princeton with Roger Sessions. Though he experimented in modernism, serialism being the predominant musical style in east coast academia, Del Tredici returned to neo-Romanticism in major works for ensemble and voice from the late 1960s.

The clarinet quintet Magyar Madness (2006) was commissioned for and dedicated to the American klezmer clarinetist David Krakauer and the Orion String Quartet. In Del Tredici’s program note from 2007, he writes that Krakauer “asked me to write something using that melismatic style [klezmer]. I told him ‘Oy vey! Klezmer I can’t do but Hungarian I’ll try.”[1]

The compositional style of the clarinet quintet, including its treatment of folk influence, is entirely neo-classical. Del Tredici writes he was influenced by Schubert’s Divertissement a la Hongroise Op. 54, specifically the “oddly ethnic seasoning” of its harmony and the “quasi-Gypsy device” of repeating the same theme with increasing ornamentation.[2] Even the proportion of movements, with the third being significantly longer than the first two, was inspired by Beethoven String Quartet No. 13, Op. 130 performed with the original Grosse Fugue Op. 133 finale.

From my perspective, the notation and musical approach to the clarinet is not dissimilar to John Adams Gnarly Buttons from my first doctoral concert.[3] The main difference between the works is that there is space for stylistic experimentation and improvisation in Magyar Madness. There is nothing inherently klezmer about the work, for example compared to Osvaldo Golijov’s clarinet quintet Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind. However, listening to Krakauer’s recording is a reminder that there is space to exaggerate the style, to make it personal. My goal in this performance is to find my own approach, informed by my artistic discoveries and development through preparation of this fourth concert.

[1] David Del Tredici, “Magyar Madness for clarinet and string quartet,” program Notes. Accessed 25 February 2022. https://www.daviddeltredici.com/works/magyar-madness/.

[2] Ibid.

[3] See ”After ’Imagined Models’ (DocMus Concert 1) / Part 1 & 2) available online: https://www.lucyabrams.net/news?offset=1568310954103. Concert recording available: https://www.lucyabrams.net/media.