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Flechtwerk (2004-06) |
Flechtwerk for clarinet in A and piano was completed in early 2006. It was commissioned by Carl Rosman and Mark Knoop, to whom it is dedicated.
The title has a double (but interconnected) reference: to “interweaving” and to the symbiotic organisms known in English as lichens (Flechte). Flechtwerk attempts to create a “symbiotic” relationship between the two parts such that each is required to complete the other. If the fungal and algal components of a lichen are separated from one another in a centrifuge, they continue to grow but as amorphous white or green masses respectively, as opposed to the considerable amount of structure displayed by the natural state. The two organisms are intertwined to the extent of widespread DNA exchange taking place between them. This is the kind of relationship between the instruments which I envisaged for Flechtwerk. Accordingly, unisons and heterophony between the clarinet and piano dominate the musical textures - the piano part stays for long periods within the pitch-range of the clarinet, and often consists of a single line. Various other “symbiotic” interconnections form between the instruments: the piano’s ability to produce a continuous “flow” of sound (despite the “percussive” nature of the elements of this flow), using the sustaining pedal, is paralleled by the extensive use of circular breathing in the clarinet part so as to produce another kind of continuousness (despite the discontinuous nature of breathing). At other points the clarinet plays two-part counterpoint in multiphonics. Thus both instruments frequently lose their individual characteristics in order to contribute to a new composite “organism”. Most of the unusual clarinet techniques employed in Flechtwerk were suggested by Carl Rosman.
Another aspect of the relationship between the two instruments was suggested by the ceremonial music of the Batak region of northern Sumatra, where an interwoven pair of rapid heterophonic melody-lines is played by a reed instrument and a set of five tuned drums. This music is specifically alluded to about four minutes into Flechtwerk.