Sonnet 3 (2001)
for solo clarinet
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Eric Ginsberg, clarinet
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PROGRAM NOTE
Sonnet 3, for unaccompanied B-flat clarinet, was commissioned by David Dunn, who premiered the work in New York City in February 2002. The work, lasting around three and a half minutes, was composed during the summer of 2001 when the composer was living in a tiny apartment in the Montmartre district of Paris and happily living on a diet consisting primarily of baguettes and Nutella. The work’s quirky fluidity and improvisatory-sounding character is produced—paradoxically, perhaps—by multiple levels of nested polyrhythms that obscure the metric pulse (and present a formidable challenge for the performer!). The primary effect of the complex rhythm is a mercurial texture of constantly-changing perceptual tempo over what is, in reality, a slow and steady meter.