Pas de Deux (1969)

Clarinet and Bassoon – 7 mins.
Publisher – Seesaw Music

Score (Free Download)

Program Note

Pas de Deux (1969) for clarinet and bassoon is written in “proportional notation” — a graphic method of indicating durations, where instead of traditional time signatures and note values, the horizontal spacing of symbols represents the intended rhythms and durations of notes. This gives the instrumentalists a degree of rhythmic independence while maintaining an awareness of their relationship with each other. The piece has a “plot:”

The bassoon enters, introverted, lost in itself. The clarinet, a flamboyant extrovert, attempts to distract him, and after several failures, finally succeeds in getting his attention with a half-plaintive, half-seductive melody. The bassoon becomes more involved in the clarinet’s ideas, introduces one of its own, and the music builds to a flurry of activity, both players playing some lines as fast as possible, followed by a section of passionate lyric intensity in which the lines grow more and more together — a passage in octaves makred “almost together,” and finally a 4-note phrase marked “very slowly, together” which ends in a unison. Then the parts gently separate, and await their next encounter. The bassoon soliloquizes first, his character brightened by reminiscences of the clarinet’s theme. The clarinet then a solo in which its opening flamboyance had been tempered by the steadiness of the bassoon’s opening idea. Somewhat accidentally, the meet again, and soon try to recapture the bliss of their previous encounter, but this time, despite attempts to rekindle their earlier attraction, they find themselves incompatible. Eventually they depart their separate ways; each leaves the way we found them. The music of the final minute is an exact retrograde of the beginning.