Let’s Go Back

Let’s Go Back (to How Things Were Before)

MOVEMENTS:

two movements, approx. 7’00”

I. Let’s Go Back (ca. 3’30”)

II. How Things Were Before (ca. 3’30”)

INSTRUMENTATION:

clarinet in b♭

PERFORMANCES:

2023-02-23: Tracey Paddock, College Music Society Southern Conference, 44th Annual Conference.

2022-07-08: Premiere. Chadwick Thomas, at the Atlantic Music Festival Contemporary Ensemble Concert.

This piece was awarded the Dennis Kam Composition Award at the 2023 College Music Society Southern Chapter Conference.

PROGRAM NOTE:

Let’s Go Back (To How Things Were Before) refracts hundreds of years of classical tradition and reflects on contemporary movements towards past sounds — whether in neo-Romantic, neo-Classical, pastiche, or pop styles. In Movement 1: Let’s Go Back, angular melodies and an exploration of the clarinet’s range invite the listener into the sound world of the clarinet. Movement 2: How Things Were Before expands on the tendency to return to the old. Scalar motives ascend and descend; the descending fifth pervades the structure of this piece, as it pervades the harmonic language of the common practice. The full range of the clarinet and diversity of musical materials form a deep exploration of the solo clarinet idiom.

Premiered at the Atlantic Music Festival on July 8, 2022 by Chadwick Thomas.