NEED HELP WITH SOLO MUSIC

okay hi guys. im new here. i play the clarinet and i have tryed composing a few ensemble pieces before but never really finished any of them. I think it was just too much to manage. now ive decided im going to write a piece just for solo clarinet similer to the cappricios for violin by paganini. im sure you are all familiar with those pieces.

so my question is this: for a solo piece like this obviously i cant have actual chords but should i worry about having alot of chord progressions in the music or should i mainly focus on just the melody line and not really try to figure out how to fit it into a chord progression. if anyone wrote a solo piece how did you compose it? how do you think the cappricios were composed?

thank you for your help.

thank you all for your timely replies.

I've only ever written atonal solo works.

But if you were to write a piece that you wanted to infer harmonies to, I'd use quickly arpegged triadic outlines moving to the melodic pitch. For instance, if you had a melodic moment that used a D, but you wanted a C Major chord underneath, you'd grace-note-arpeggiate C-E-G and then end up on the D.

The same way works to have a counterpoint - by switching registers, you can almost create two counterpoint lines.

thank you. I think I understand what you mean.

Look at Bach's pieces for solo instruments, ie cello suites, etc.; you might get something from those.