Bermel - Theme and Absurdities

Derek Bermel

Theme and Absurdities for Solo Clarinet in B ď ˘

Theme and Absurdities is a humorously virtuosic piece for solo clarinet, a spoof of all those loveable yet undeniably annoying theme and variations pieces based on some aria. A whole bunch of these were written for clarinet between about 1850 and 1930, and they make great encore pieces. This one is a particularly nightmarish tribute to the genre, in which the variations, served up in eight-bar chunks, grow steadily in ridiculousness.

The nugget of the piece is contained in the opening phrase. The theme is complex – certainly unsingable, with large jumps through the interval of a seventh – and almost as absurd as the eleven “absurdities” (and coda) that follow.

Theme and Absurdities employs a huge pitch range; at one point the clarinet shrieks out a high D. Daring three-octave leaps are taken, technique itself becomes the subject of ridicule (chromatic runs, fluttertonguing, notes jam-packed into a few measures), and in the coda the clarinet is unceremoniously waved from side to side. Finally, in a fitting bit of pomposity to top it all off, a quote from Also Sprach Zarathustra.

— Mic Holwin

Derek Bermel is active as a composer of concert music, as a clarinetist, jazz and rock keyboard player and vocalist, and as a conductor and the music director of TONK, a Dutch-American ensemble whose performances meld poetry, music, visual arts, and dance. He has been awarded many of today's most significant composition prizes, including the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim award, Fulbright Fellowships, and residencies at Tanglewood, Aspen, Banff, Yaddo, the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, and Civitella Ranieri. As of this writing, he is composer-in-residence with the American Composers Orchestra and director of the New York Youth Symphony’s “Making Score” seminars for young composers.

Bermel has performed as soloist in his clarinet concerto Voices with the BBC Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Tainjin Symphony (China), the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and the American Composers Orchestra, who commissioned and premiered the work at Carnegie Hall in 1998. He has composed orchestral works commissioned by the National Symphony, the New Jersey Symphony, the Pacific Symphony, the Saint Louis Symphony, and the Westchester Philharmonic (NY).

Bermel is the founding clarinetist of the chamber ensemble Music From Copland House. His own chamber music can be heard on the New World Records CD Soul Garden, whose eight works feature Bermel himself, violist Paul Neubauer, cellist Fred Sherry, pianist Christopher Taylor, and the Borromeo String Quartet. Other chamber works have been commissioned by the Guarneri String Quartet and eighth blackbird. Also available for solo clarinet is Thracian Sketches (2003), based on Bulgarian folk songs.

Theme and Absurdities has been recorded by the composer on New World Records CD NWCR 895.

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THEME AND ABSURDITIES Derek Bermel

Lighty lumbering, Molto rubato ( =52)

moving ahead

sub.

poco

move

(1993)

a tempo

a tempo 1

5

rubato a tempo

accel.

5

a tempo rit.

5

deflated

2

scurrying

slightly faster

(open) 5

5 5

5

5

5 5

5

5

5 5

triumphantly

pochiss. barely tongued

3

5

5

quasi legato

sub. blatantly

4 molto legato, float 5

5

sub.

(sempre) sub. loosen embouchure molto vibr.

4

obnoxious Š Copyright 2004 by X Pyre Music All Rights for the World Exclusively Administered by Songs of Peer, Ltd.

bluesy

3

quickly

=44

5

with loose, changing embouchure out of tune, drunkenly dizzy

quasi gliss.

quickly a tempo

a tempo

molto

molto

rit.

quasi gliss.

quasi gliss.

poco rubato

drawn out

=80

accel.

(with lots of technique)

ord.

6

molto accel.

= 90

lightly catching up with yourself

accel.

rit.

molto Slowly fltg.

more and more legato

heavier with effort