Net Clarity

I was struck by the idea to write a work for clarinet and piano after hearing a performance of Reger's first clarinet sonata by my partner Amber Lucas. The harmonic and contrapuntal complexities of Reger's music in addition to his unusual phrasal structures seemed nicely compatible with the contrapuntal language I had been developing in my own work. At the time of Amber's performance I was working on Circumnutation, a cycle of inventions for keyboard that explored the structural potentialities of the diatonic set (equivalent to the major scale) and its relationship to the aggregate (the collection of all 12 pitch classes). Net Clarity proceeds from the romantic clarinet sonata as a primary model, but other sounds and allusions abound: ranging from Bach and Schoenberg to Bebop and Babbitt.