Soliloquy for Clarinet No. 21

This is my "Soliloquy for Clarinet No. 21".

Here is the link to my previous soliloquy for clarinet, composed in March 2020:

https://www.youngcomposers.com/t39457/soliloquy-for-clarinet-no-20/

Would you like to develop the soliloquy to a longer piece? Many motivic materials in it can be developed, e.g. melody from opening bar, descending broken chord, trills etc. 

I think the meter of bar 19 can be eliminated since it's the same as the previous bar. Do you use meter as rhythm o signify where the accent is?

I see in your previous post how you define "Soliloquy":

"I call many of my pieces by the name of "Soliloquy" which to me signifies a short (aphoristic), reflective, often calm, and sometimes sad, piece written for one instrument (or sometimes a set of instruments behaving as one). These pieces often serve as a kind of character sketch of the particular instrument for which they are written, and/or to present a single musical statement/argument in a brief yet parsimoniously meaningful manner."

Interesting idea! What is the mood for this piece? Why do you think it fit clarinet? 

You also said that "they(Soliloquies) are the product of inspiration and not prior intention." Will you turn the inspiration to a more organized composition, or just let it stay its own way? Just curious about that.

Thank you Henry Ng for your review and suggestions and questions.

Thanks for pointing out the redundancy of the time signature in bar 19. I eliminated it and reposted the PDF.

Regarding development of the soliloquy, as I have said in the description which you have quoted, a soliloquy is brief. If I intended to develop it further, I think it would be another type of composition and not a soliloquy as far as my conception and definition of "soliloquy".

Regarding your second quotation from my previous post, as I say, they are the "product of inspiration" and not the inspiration itself. So of course the inspiration is a bit organized and "composed" or subjected to the process of composition. The inspiration is only the initial idea or theme.

The mood can be characterized as reflective or meditative. That is why I think I saw it fit for the clarinet.

Simple piece, very "readable" for which I thank you since it's already 8 am and I should be sleeping. Apart from that you provide the score, which I always value :). I ended up here and it seems like this piece likes what it is and doesn't intend to go neither further nor back.

Good job? I also believe it fits with a clarinet but I'm no clarinettist so I can be as wrong as the rest of the text written here.

Thank you for sharing your 21st soliloquy.

Kind regards,
Daniel–Ømicrón.

 

This piece seems to wander up and down the range of the Clarinet, without really exploring the rhythmic dimension of the composition.  You have basically only two different approaches to rhythm in this piece:  straight 8th note arpeggios and longer held notes.  There are so many different kinds of figurations you could have built!  The potential of building many different kinds of interesting melodies rests upon these different kinds of rhythmic variations that can hook a listener into something that characterizes your melody instead of just arpeggios all at the same rhythmic rate.  You do have this motif though:   but then you sequence that motif at different pitch levels over and over .. 4 times, which is perhaps too much repetition without variation.  You also ignore the placement of strong and weak beats within your motif, indiscriminately placing your motif into the composition without regard for cadence and phrase lengths, making it seem like a long run on sentence.  Anyway - that's my take on it.  If you're happy with it though that's what's important.  Thanks for sharing!

On 2/9/2023 at 11:16 AM, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

This piece seems to wander up and down the range of the Clarinet, without really exploring the rhythmic dimension of the composition.  You have basically only two different approaches to rhythm in this piece:  straight 8th note arpeggios and longer held notes.  There are so many different kinds of figurations you could have built!  The potential of building many different kinds of interesting melodies rests upon these different kinds of rhythmic variations that can hook a listener into something that characterizes your melody instead of just arpeggios all at the same rhythmic rate.  You do have this motif though:   but then you sequence that motif at different pitch levels over and over .. 4 times, which is perhaps too much repetition without variation.  You also ignore the placement of strong and weak beats within your motif, indiscriminately placing your motif into the composition without regard for cadence and phrase lengths, making it seem like a long run on sentence.  Anyway - that's my take on it.  If you're happy with it though that's what's important.  Thanks for sharing!

 

If you look at it like that .... But surely there's a subjective component to music as you point out in the end of your criticism. And indeed I am, or at least I was, happy with it, the way it was, the way I was inspired to compose it. Your severe criticism has of course served as a jolt to that satisfaction and happiness. While it gives me food for thought, I still think that its performance the way it is would make a huge difference, for performance adds interpretation and soul to the music, even though it be "arpeggios all at the same rhythmic rate" or it "wander up and down the range of the Clarinet" as you characterize it.

P. S. A non-musical technical question: How did you quote my motif? Is there a simple way to do it that I am not aware of?

35 minutes ago, luderart said:

P. S. A non-musical technical question: How did you quote my motif? Is there a simple way to do it that I am not aware of?

Usually every computer has a shortcut key to be able to take a screenshot.  How you do that depends on whether you're using MacOS, Windows or ChromeOS and involves different buttons but you should be able to paste the selected screenshot into a message just by using your ordinary paste keyboard shortcut.