Armando Bayolo
On Becoming Ungathered
for clarinet and large wind ensemble
Olibel Music
Armando Bayolo On Becoming Ungathered
Version for winds by the composer
Instrumentation
Piccolo
4 Flutes
2 Oboes
English Horn
5 Clarinets
2Bass Clarinets
Contrabass clarinet
2 Alto saxes
Tenor sax
Baritone sax
2 Bassoons
Contrabassoon
4 Horns
3 Trumpets (in B-flat or C)
2 Trombones
Bass Trombone
Tuba
Timpani
Percussion (3 players)
1. Vibraphone, snare drum, claves, log drum, suspended crash cymbal
2. Glockenspiel, Bass drum, tam-tam (shared with perc. 3), whip, 4 tom-toms, suspended crash cymbal
3. Chimes, crotales (lower octave), woodblocks, conga, triangle (small, with high sound), tam-tam (shared with perc. 2), suspended crash cymbal.
Harp
Piano (doubles celesta)
Commissioned by Coastal Carolina University and Eric Schultz.
Written from august through October, 2024 in Florissant, Missouri and Urbana, Illinois.
Duration: ca. 25 minutes
Program Note
I am one of billions. I am stardust gathered fleetingly into form. I will be ungathered. The stardust will go on to be other things someday and I will be free.
--Laini Taylor
I like Carl Sagan’s idea that we are all “stardust.” The matter that makes our bodies—and the atoms that make up our bodies—was forged in the maelstrom of the furnaces within the stars. Matter cannot be destroyed, either; it simply gets redefined. Recycled, if you will, into other things in the same maelstrom that formed it. In this way we are, each of us, eternal.
In On Becoming Ungathered, our stardust nature is given musical life in two movements connected by a wild cadenza from the soloist. The first movement is structured around four “elemental fanfares”: the first for water, or rain (woodwinds); the second for earth (percussion); the third for fire (brass); and the fourth for wind (strings and woodwinds and brass). In between, the clarinet dances and sings playfully, sometimes angrily and dramatically. The universe itself contemplating its existence, perhaps (in another Saganism). As the musical material around it disintegrates, literally, in wind being blown through woodwind and brass instruments, the clarinet’s wildness gives way to meditation and melancholy. The slow movement is built around two ideas: a “nocturne” and an “aria”. These are each made up of material first heard in the first movement, but transformed like matter within a star. The concerto concludes in quiet, contemplative apotheosis.
On Becoming Ungathered was commissioned by Eric Schultz and Coastal Carolina University. It was composed in the fall of 2024 in Florissant, Missouri and Urbana, Illinois and is dedicated, with gratitude and friendship, to Eric Schultz.
--Armando Bayolo Florissant, MO 10.26.2024
I am one of billions. I am stardust gathered fleetingly into form. I will be ungathered. The stardust will go on to be other things someday and I will be free.
--LainiTaylor
for Eric Schultz
OnBecomingUngathered
(Concerto for Clarinet and Winds)
ArmandoBayolo