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- Yehudi Wyner
Commedia (2003)
- Associated Music Publishers Inc (World)
Programme Note
Composer Note:
The impulse for the creation of a new composition for clarinet and piano came from Richard Stoltzman. He wanted something to help him celebrate a significant birthday, something he could receive and participate in, but also something he could pass on to others. He also wanted to share this experience with his treasured colleague, Emanuel Ax. And so he proposed this project to me, and with great enthusiasm, I embraced the idea. With Richard, my friendship goes back many years, beginning in the 1960's. In recent times we've done some recordings together and even exchanged pastry recipes. With Manny the friendship is more recent, but towards both these artists I've harbored an enduring and unclouded admiration.
Commedia was written during the summer months of 2002, largely in Tuscany and Leipzig, Germany. As I began working on the piece I had no idea what its form or shape would be. But I felt that it must begin on a note of high - even frantic - energy and that the organizing motivic sonority would be a major seventh enclosing a minor third. (In recognition of the cascading onslaught of the opening attack, the tempo direction is "LABOOH", a mysterious word of obscure origin, possibly derived from the expression: "'Like A Bat Out Of Hell".)
Eventually the motoric thrust runs out of steam and undergoes a transformation into something more suspended and expressive. This is followed by a lengthy stretch of music that is lyric and flexible, with the clarinet and piano engaging each other in melodic and figurative exchanges. The harmony is rich and progressively inflected, but the music is never just one thing: it is in constant flux, now amorous, now insistent, now timid and hesitant, now despairing. There is a brief chorale with commentary, and a semi-improvised scherzando duet. The music moves towards a passionate climax, and then recedes into private sadness, as if in reminiscence. Almost as an afterthought, the quick music of the opening is brought back as if to say: perhaps it was only a joke!
According to the OED, Macaulay called Dante's Divine Comedy a personal narrative. Dante himself called his poem La Commedia because "in the conclusion, it is prosperous, pleasant and desirable," and in its style, "lax and unpretending... written in the vulgar tongue in which women and children speak."
I infer from this that not all of La Commedia is sweetness and light, and that the style, "lax and unpretending... in the vulgar tongue in which women and children speak," implies that it avoids learned pedantry and embraces the vernacular, the direct and unpretentious language of everyday speech.
Commedia is dedicated to Emanuel Ax and Richard Stoltzman.
— Yehudi Wyner
The impulse for the creation of a new composition for clarinet and piano came from Richard Stoltzman. He wanted something to help him celebrate a significant birthday, something he could receive and participate in, but also something he could pass on to others. He also wanted to share this experience with his treasured colleague, Emanuel Ax. And so he proposed this project to me, and with great enthusiasm, I embraced the idea. With Richard, my friendship goes back many years, beginning in the 1960's. In recent times we've done some recordings together and even exchanged pastry recipes. With Manny the friendship is more recent, but towards both these artists I've harbored an enduring and unclouded admiration.
Commedia was written during the summer months of 2002, largely in Tuscany and Leipzig, Germany. As I began working on the piece I had no idea what its form or shape would be. But I felt that it must begin on a note of high - even frantic - energy and that the organizing motivic sonority would be a major seventh enclosing a minor third. (In recognition of the cascading onslaught of the opening attack, the tempo direction is "LABOOH", a mysterious word of obscure origin, possibly derived from the expression: "'Like A Bat Out Of Hell".)
Eventually the motoric thrust runs out of steam and undergoes a transformation into something more suspended and expressive. This is followed by a lengthy stretch of music that is lyric and flexible, with the clarinet and piano engaging each other in melodic and figurative exchanges. The harmony is rich and progressively inflected, but the music is never just one thing: it is in constant flux, now amorous, now insistent, now timid and hesitant, now despairing. There is a brief chorale with commentary, and a semi-improvised scherzando duet. The music moves towards a passionate climax, and then recedes into private sadness, as if in reminiscence. Almost as an afterthought, the quick music of the opening is brought back as if to say: perhaps it was only a joke!
According to the OED, Macaulay called Dante's Divine Comedy a personal narrative. Dante himself called his poem La Commedia because "in the conclusion, it is prosperous, pleasant and desirable," and in its style, "lax and unpretending... written in the vulgar tongue in which women and children speak."
I infer from this that not all of La Commedia is sweetness and light, and that the style, "lax and unpretending... in the vulgar tongue in which women and children speak," implies that it avoids learned pedantry and embraces the vernacular, the direct and unpretentious language of everyday speech.
Commedia is dedicated to Emanuel Ax and Richard Stoltzman.
— Yehudi Wyner