Rhapsody

Rhapsody for violin and piano (arranged for Bb clarinet and piano and viola and piano)

Paul Paccione

Rhapsody Violin and Piano (2004) Bb Clarinet and Piano (2005) Viola and Piano (2007) For the ancient Greeks, a “rhapsody” was a “stitch song” performed by a traveling poet/minstrel, who stitched together the parts of one’s poems/songs both from memory and through improvisation. Composition for me is a similar process - an intertwining of both remembered and newly discovered musical ideas and sounds that are synthesized to form new constellations. In more technical terms, counterpoint is the means by which the horizontal and vertical elements of the music are interwoven, that is, “stitched together” to form one, overall, sonority. It is in both these senses that I call this piece a rhapsody.

The piece was recorded by clarinetist Molly Paccione and pianist Jenny Perron. It appears on the c.d. recording “Our Beauties Are Not Ours,” New World Records (2010), Cat. No. 80706: (www.newworldrecords.org).

The score is available from Frog Peak Music, Box 1062, Lebanon, NH 03766; www.frogpeak.org).

Paul Paccione