Recycles (1980)

Indeterminate Chamber Ensemble (including two keyboardists, and one clarinetist) – 7 min.

Program Note

Recycles (1980) was commissioned by Barney Childs, an American composer well known for using improvisation and chance elements in his music. The indeterminate elements in Recycles include its instrumentation and the way in which instrumentalists choose to double and sustain pitches. The choices concerning these elements are made before and during rehearsals; each performing ensemble that plays this piece works out it own realization. The core of the activity is found in two lines assigned to antiphonal keyboards, each embellished by its own group of auxiliary instruments. All of the pitches fall within the octave extending up from middle C, until the final break-out clarinet cadenza.