Thomas Clark – composer / digital artist

  • CLARK’S RULES

    These are a distillation of my guiding principles through many years of teaching, serving as an academic leader, and meeting, working with, and understanding many very successful musicians. They don’t really belong on this composer-and-photo-art site. Or do they?

    Clark’s Rules for Musician Success

    Teaching is not so much imparting knowledge as it is facilitating learning. A teacher is an enabling coach on the sideline; all the on-field action is by the student, the learner. From a veteran coach, here is a simple but effective playbook.

    Each rule is a command to action.

    Rule 1: SHOW UP.

    Music is a team sport, and the team depends on you being there every time.

    Rule 2:  PAY ATTENTION.

    Don’t just watch and listen — think about what you see and hear.

    Rule 3:  DO THE WORK.

    Just enough? No, all there is to do.

    Rule 4:  JOIN A TEAM.

    Commit to the team’s success as your own.

    Rule 5:  PLAN AHEAD.

    Essential to accomplishing Rules 1 and 3.

    Rule 6:  BECOME A LEADER.

    It’s a lifelong process of self-development, not a hat you can simply put on.           

    Rule 7:  ENCOURAGE OTHERS.

    Part of Rule 4, this is what it means to be a humane human.

    Feel free to quote and pass them on!

    The original Clark’s Rules for Musician Success above are basic principles to live by, originally posted in my Texas State School of Music Director’s DIARY on January 16, 2017 . They have worn well, largely drawn from my observation of the common traits of great musicians I’ve had the good fortune to meet or work with.

    Clark’s Rules for Good Leadership

    As I headed toward the end of my administrative career, I reflected also on the many wonderful leadership mentors I’ve had the honor to work with, especially Dave Shrader. My reflections, incorporating a few of the first 7 rules, were posted in Director’s DIARY on . We start by repeating Rules 5 through 7:

    Rule 6:    BECOME A LEADER

    Whatever you endeavor to lead, it’s a lifelong process of self-development.           

    Rule 5: PLAN AHEAD

    Fundamentally, that’s the main thing a leader does.

    Rule 7:    ENCOURAGE OTHERS

    Enable their good ideas. Trust their skill and commitment. Seek the best in others.

    Rule 8:    IDENTIFY GOALS

    Embrace a true mission. Let the practical goals flow from the mission.

    Rule 9:    TAKE RISKS       

    Take calculated, reasonable risks worth the payoff. Don’t be afraid of failure. Redefine it as simply not succeeding on the first try.

    Rule 3:    DO THE WORK

    Not everything can or should be delegated. Be well informed. Know how the systems and teams you lead operate.

    Rule 10:  SOLVE PROBLEMS

    Not necessarily quickly. Sometimes with time they solve themselves. Wait while seeking all the information, possibilities you need to consider. For the toughest, brainstorm, think the unthinkable. Engage others in the solution.          

    Rule 11:  ACT ETHICALLY

    Be considerate but honest. Avoid being unnecessarily judgmental. Transcend stereotypes. Don’t assume you know what’s best for others. Choose the greatest benefit for the greatest number of stakeholders, while being fair to all.

    Rule 12:  SHARE CREDIT

    Or just simply give it away. It will come back to you if it’s deserved. Everyone knows anyway, the best accomplishments are team collaborations.

    Since 12 is to me an almost magical number, I think I’ll stop . . . for now.

  • Ice Floe

    1983 . . . soprano, guitar (7:50 min.) . . . words by Robert Nosow

    Robert Nosow was a graduate student in musicology at North Texas when the poem was written. David Lynn Kennedy was a grad student in guitar killed by Denton police in a tragic incident in 1983. Soprano Jing Tam was a doctoral student who also knew Kennedy, one of many NTSU/UNT music students who died during my 28 years there.

    Jing Ling Tam, soprano; Paul Wierzbowski, guitar

  • Night Songs

    1969 . . . trombone (8 minutes)

  • Geography of the Chronosphere

    1975 . . . piano (12 minutes)

    Excerpts:

    1. precession of the equinoxes

    2. Stonehenge at dawn

    3. Heraclitean vortex

    4. lunar litany

  • Amber Atoms in the Fire Gleaming

    2022 . . . Gymnopédie (5:00)

    This musical sketch is titled with a translated line (“Où les atomes d’ambre au feu se miroitant”) of a French poem by de Latour that may have inspired Erik Satie — the poem ends with the word “gymnopaedia.” In keeping with Satie’s radically sparse, (one could even say) minimalist style in his Trois Gymnopédies for piano (1888), this homage generates entirely from one modern harmonic constellation, arpeggiated repeatedly in a gentle, almost imperceptible meter, then growing colorful “amber” sustained highlight sounds. Eventually the arpeggios begin to spin and swirl in a layered, kaleidoscopic texture that is “minimalist” in the 20th-century usage as the description for repetitive ostinato music.

    Go to Lab 1: Genesis of a Gymnopédie in Mapping the Music Universe for a complete step-by-step explanation of the process of composing Amber Atoms in the Fire Gleaming.

    Since this is modeled on a piano piece, Gymnopédie, here is a playable piano version:

  • Nuages

    (Clouds)

    2022 . . . sound environment . . . (8:30)

    Quoting Debussy as homage to the first of his beautiful Nocturnes, musical patterns float, repeat, morph, disappear. Many of my earlier compositions are titled under the category of “Animated Landscapes,” referencing a musical analog to landscape painting, sketching musical textures of moving, evolving pitch constellations and colors. Perhaps that makes Nuages a “skyscape.”

    Much of the musical material is shared with the third movement of my string orchestra work, Three States of Water.

  • Summit Ridge

    2022 . . . digital sound sculpture (7 minutes)

    Composed after reading Ed Viesturs’ book, No Shortcuts to the Top, his first-person account of the successful quest to climb to the summits of the 14 tallest mountains in the world, all taller than 8,000 meters (26,247 feet) above sea level. My most vivid personal and photographic experience with glacier-topped mountain ridges includes several visits to Rocky Mountain National Park, where the Continental Divide rises to a spectacular ridge of 12,000-ft. peaks beside 14,259-ft. Long’s Peak. My son Owen and I once hiked to the summit of 12,234-ft. Flattop Mountain — less than half the elevation of Viesturs’ 8,000 meters. As its name suggests, Flattop’s summit is not dramatic but connects with the string of ridges between spectacular Hallett Peak (center of photo) and Otis Peak (left of Hallett).

    Musical patterns are all based on constellation streams of four complex 8-pitch interval arrays, as explained in Mapping the Music Universe. The chords are first presented as tall monolithic blocks separated by silence in the style of Morton Feldman:

    Then they become rhythmically steady arpeggios, constantly repeating in the style of John Adams. Out of this continuous ridge of arpeggios emerge the individual pitches of the four sonorities, rising to sonic summits.

    Other majestic mountain ridges I’ve admired include the Sierra Madre Oriental Mountains on the southwestern horizon of Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico, as seen from the Macroplaza. Then there is the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina, where we once lived just an hour from the scenic Blue Ridge Parkway. Neither as high as the Rockies, both these sloping ridges change their deep blue hues with clouds and the sun’s progress through a day. Finally, though the Texas Hill Country is not really mountains at all, we live on its eastern edge on a road named Summit Ridge Drive.

  • Mapping the Cosmos – Book II

    2022 . . . collection of more advanced etudes for Piano

    Mapping the Music Universe produced several small etudes to illustrate the compositional potential of musical patterns explained in the ebook. The inspiration to collect them into a series came from many years of fascination with Bartók’s wonderful Mikrokosmos series of 153 piano pieces in modern styles. Book I contains 7 short etudes, each titled with an astronomical entity named for a mythological character and ranging in difficulty for the pianist.

    Book I scores

    Book II presents more extended compositional explorations, each suitable as a stand-alone recital piece. Beyond Mikrokosmos, Book II pays homage to Debussy’s revered books of Preludes. The pieces in Book II embrace the Impressionist approach to texture and form, while evolving beyond Debussy’s tonal language.

    Book II scores

    Deep Sky

    sample excerpt

    Stonehenge

    sample excerpt

    Lunar Litany

    sample excerpt

    Star Map (Carte du Ciel)

  • Forest Paths

    from

    Book of Canons

    2022 . . . Sound environment (18 minutes)

    My compositional fascination with musical canons began in the early 1970s with study (at the University of Michigan) of Ockeghem’s 15th-century polyphony, the 10 canons in Bach’s 18th-century The Musical Offering, and Webern’s 20th-century Symphonie Op.21. As a young professor in the 1980s teaching 16th-century counterpoint at what was then North Texas State University (now UNT), I used canon as a challenging contrapuntal writing assignment. In 1985, a wind ensemble piece, Parallel Horizons (Homage to Schoenberg), was my first formal composition constructed by canon. In Dark Matter, other contrapuntal writing surrounds an extended canon. Now canon pervades much of my 21st-century writing, a challenging yet stimulating and gratifying approach to texture and continuity of material.

    Book of Canons collects 14 excerpts from these works, showing each canon’s subject, points and pitch levels of answer, and sounding each excerpt scored as a string trio. Forest Paths stitches them together in an ambling journey along a path through a metaphorical sound environment of sunlight, shadows, and leaf-fluttering breezes.

  • Symphony Dances

    2022 . . . string orchestra (19 min.)

    In a lighthearted cabaret style, each dance adopts tunes from the iconic symphonies of master composers Mozart and Beethoven. Each is set in different key signatures from the quoted theme, as appropriate for these venerated dance forms.

    Mazurka . . . Zambra . . . Tango . . . Waltz

    String quartet version
    (alternate transcriptions for sax or clarinet quartet)

    Mazurka

    Mazurka (imagine Warsaw) explores the graceful rising and falling of the melodic theme in the sometimes-neglected beautiful second movement of Beethoven‘s masterpiece, Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67.

    Zambra

    An ancestor of Jarabe tapatío, the national dance of Mexico, Zambra is an old Spanish flamenco dance still performed in Andalusia. Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 is famous partly for its majestic slow second movement, a dark dirge in A Minor that builds relentlessly through a theme and variation process. In Zambra (imagine Granada) the harmony is darkened while the persistent rhythmic repetition is lightened by a fast flamenco tempo.

    Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 “Jupiter” is one of his greatest masterpieces. His No. 40 “Great G Minor” and No. 38 “Prague” are also magnificent. It makes one wonder if he had lived longer, what other stunning music would have poured forth.

    Tango

    Tango (imagine Buenos Aires) is built from the main themes in the opening of the No. 40 in G Minor as a languid blues tune. The keys flow like dancers, the musicians feeling their way through the shadows.

    Waltz

    Waltz (imagine Vienna) draws on the main theme of the No. 41 Jupiter’s finale, a curving melody of rhythmic vitality and fascinating turning shapes.

    Performance materials available for any version:
    tc24@txstate.edu