Thomas Clark – composer / digital artist

Category: 2020-

  • Eine Neue Nachtmusik

    2025 . . . Serenade for Strings . . . 12 minutes

    There are so many beloved serenades. There is Dvořák’s Serenáda pro dechové nástroje d moll (Op. 44, 1978) for winds. For strings, Smyčcová serenáda E dur (Op.22, 1875) by Dvořák and Serenade for Strings in C Major (Op.48, 1880) by Tchaikovsky stand out as masterful evocations of the genre’s elegance and vibrant color potential. And then there are Mozart’s many wonderful serenades, some for winds and the most popular, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, for strings. (Our daughter played it as a violist in her high-school string quartet, and everyone in the family sang it around the house.)

    The language of my new serenade’s title honors that beloved string piece. It also fits my ongoing obsession with nocturnal and astronomical images. (See Mapping the Music Universe.)

    The introductory first part quietly morphs darkly complex sonorities. In contrast, I recently became interested in studying the lovely middle movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 18 (K.456, 1784). Its simple half-note secondary theme launched a study that led to composing variations on it, becoming the brightening latter two parts of this new serenade.

    Nebula

    floating

    Planets

    wandering

    Stars

    dancing

  • FARBEN

    2025 . . . 17 wind/perc. instruments . . . 6 minutes

    Three pieces of the early 20th century, which I studied deeply in the 1970s and later used extensively in my teaching of modern music, were each masterful explorations of musical sound color:

    • Claude Debussy’s La Mer (1905), an iconic tone poem of Impressionistic musical painting with an orchestral palette
    • Arnold Schoenberg’s “Farben (Summer Morning by a Lake: Chord-Colors”, the third of his Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 16 (1909) — a gentle study of orchestral sound color
    • Anton Webern’s Symphony, Op. 21 (1928), whose first movement is a delicate gem of pointillistic color canon built on one enormous, static, symmetrical 13-pitch constellation

    After fifty years, these works are embedded more deeply than ever in my musical consciousness. Farben pays special homage to Schoenberg’s masterpiece, layering kaleidoscopic wind-instrument colors to build massive, morphing constellations, echoing Webern’s hidden chord-color symmetry.

  • GEODES

    2025 . . . wind ensemble . . . 13 minutes

    In the midst of my recent Impressionistic “Sketches” series, the 2024 piece Folio (TC143) was a throwback to the more abstract sound mass style of the 1960s and ’70s. Its percussive attacks and inert masses of sound were all synthesized, also throwbacks to my early days of electronic tape music. (One of the earliest electronic compositions, Stockhausen’s 1960 Nr. 12 Kontakte, was full of sounds like giant steel beams hitting a concrete floor!) The other retro feature of Folio is suggested in its title: homage to Earle Brown’s 1952 FOLIO, a collection of abstract art scores in stark, proportional graphic notation.

    A wind and percussion transformation of Folio was challenging. Folio (TC143) was composed in the abstract avant-garde style of the ’60s. It carved sound sculptures of solid, hard-edged sonorities in expansive pitch/time space. Now colored with cool woodwind sounds, radiating brass, and sparkling percussion, GEODES animates Folio‘s solid sound masses in surging and fading rhythmic textures.

    The chaotic boldness of rocks . . . my own collection of many found on beaches and hikes, but also splendid displays at three places: Dick’s Rock Shoppe in Estes Park, Colorado; Lizzadro Museum of Lapidary Art in Elmhurst (now in Oak Brook), Illinois; and a wonderful gallery of geodes at the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum in Midland, Texas. A geode is Nature’s sculpture, an inscrutable gray rock sphere that, when sawed open, reveals a magical world of dazzling-colored crystals. Different minerals make crystals of varied hues of pink, purple, umber, or cream, reflecting new light.

    Pyrite

    Calcite

    Amethyst

    Quartz

  • Mocha’s Rag

    My mind is always silently playing music of some kind in my head. Constantly . . . including first thing every morning while I’m walking with the dog.

    To focus this mental playback loop into something constructive, I’ve started humming tunes to myself on the walk. The dog seems to like it, thinks I’m singing for her.

    Sometimes this new habit escalates from humming familiar jazz and Broadway classics to composing new tunes. A while ago I started composing in my head a Scott Joplin style rag. (I have always loved and admired Graceful Ghost Rag by Michigan prof Bill Bolcom.)

    Back at the computer, here is what eventually came of this mind game:

    The dog’s name is Mocha.

  • GEODES

    2025 . . . 17 winds / percussion . . . 12:30

    In the midst of my recent Impressionistic “Sketches” series, the 2024 piece Folio was a throwback to the more abstract sound mass style of the 1960s and ’70s. Its percussive attacks and inert masses of sound were all synthesized, also throwbacks to my early days of electronic tape music. (One of the earliest electronic compositions, Stockhausen’s 1960 Nr. 12 Kontakte, was full of sounds like giant steel beams hitting a concrete floor!) The other retro feature of Folio is suggested in its title: homage to Earle Brown’s 1952 FOLIO, a collection of abstract art scores in stark, proportional graphic notation.

    This wind and percussion transformation of Folio was challenging. But I thought about the chaotic boldness of rocks — my own collection of many found on beaches and hikes, but also splendid displays at three places: Dick’s Rock Shoppe in Estes Park, Colorado; Lizzadro Museum of Lapidary Art in Elmhurst (now in Oak Brook), Illinois; and a wonderful gallery of geodes at the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum in Midland, Texas. Geodes are Nature’s sculptures, inscrutable gray rocks that, when sawed open, reveal magical worlds of dazzling-colored crystal structure.

  • Belle Péninsule

    Five symphonic sketches

    2024 . . . orchestra (Picc, Fl, Ob, Cl, Bsn, 2 Hn, Trp, Tbn, Timp, Perc, Pno, Strings)

    Homage to Debussy’s Impressionistic masterpieces, La Mer and Nocturnes

    Debussy avoided the label “symphony” or “tone poem” by calling them each “three symphonic sketches”. The first sketch of Nocturnes, subtitled “Nuages,” is musically quoted in IV “Nuages blanc”.

    Adopting his French language also recognizes the early explorers of the Great Lakes region of North America. The first decades of my life began there in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula (the “mitten”). It has its own smaller Leelanau Peninsula in the northwest corner (the mitten’s “little finger”) near Interlochen’s National Music Camp, where I spent many summers. Nearby Grand Traverse Bay has its own even smaller Old Mission peninsula, where I loved to visit its lighthouse. The Leelanau has a grand lighthouse at its northern tip and a scenic drive, state highway M21, winding for 64 miles all the way around the peninsula’s shoreline, through forests and past the Great Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes.

    In 1984 my piece titled PENINSULA for piano and sound synthesis was a more experimental work that traced a map of the Leelanau and its landmarks to determine by their spatial coordinates the timing and pitches of sound constellations. Moving forward from that mapping phase of my compositions, my Impressionistic phase produced the sound sculpture Leelanau Sketches in 2022. Some of its musical material reappears now in these five symphonic sketches, Belle Péninsule.

    I. “Grand sable”

    dune breeze

    II. “Chemin sombre”

    forest trail

    III. “Brouillard”

    fog snow ice

    IV. “Nuages blanc”

    clouds and sky

    V. “Mer brillante”

    shining water

  • Autumn Rain

    2024 . . . flute and viola (alt. clarinet) . . . 5:30

    In Robert Frost’s poem “My November Guest,” an exquisite expression of loss and sadness, four phrases stood out expressing the gray beauty of November:

    “these dark days of autumn rain” . . . “my sorrow when it’s here with me”
    “the bare, the withered tree” . . . “the sodden pasture lane”

    Autumn Rain Music was originally composed in Ann Arbor for oboe and piano in 1971. Decades later in San Marcos, in 2017 the music evolved into an elegy for unaccompanied English horn, and now to this duo arrangement, heard here with sound-synthesis enhanced background.

  • Crystallography

    2024 . . . Abstract video and digital sound

    This is the first time I began a multimedia piece with the visual element as primary design concept rather than the music, with visuals joining after. The visual concept, as suggested by the title, is an exploration of patterns in nature featuring complex masses and threads of color. They resemble busy Jackson Pollack action paintings revealing isomorphic patterns. The title evokes the abstract patterning of molecular crystal growth.

    The synthesized “soundtrack” is music adapted from my 2022 work, STONEHENGE for solo classical guitar:

  • Brno Variations

    2024 . . . wind ensemble . . . (13 min.) . . . Picc, Fl, Ob, 3 Clar, Alto Sax, Ten Sax, Bari Sax, Bsn, 3 Trp, 2 Hn, 2 Tbn, Euph, Tuba, Timp, Perc, Dbl Bass

    Leos Janácek composed his great concert work, Sinfonietta, in 1926 for the Sokol Gymnastic Festival in Prague. It is what I call musical sketches of his home city, Brno, the largest city in the Moravian east of what was then Czechoslovakia. I visited Brno several times starting in 1991 to perform my music at its International Music Festival. The festival traditionally ends with a performance of Sinfonietta by the Brno Philharmonic in Janácek Divadlo (theatre). In 1993 my ballet, PTACI, was premiered at historic Mahunovo Divadlo, across a plaza from Janácek Divadlo.

    Though I could have continued my “Sketches” series with a “Brno Sketches,” instead this new work is a set of more abstract variations partly based on and quoting themes from Sinfonietta (in the tradition of Brahms’ Variations on a Theme of Haydn). Variation 1 “Canon” engages that ancient musical technique, evoking Brno’s medieval history. Variation 2 “Overtones” explores two harmonic series, C and Bb, painted over each other in layers of color, with hints of fanfare emerging through the clouds. Variation 3 “Constellations” is a kaleidoscopic succession of large sonorities built on stone-sturdy Perfect Fifth intervals brightened by jazz-like added tones. Variation 4 “Fanfare” is an ostinato pattern-music fantasia on Sinfonietta‘s grand fanfare themes.

    To obtain free performance materials, email: TC24@txstate.edu

  • FOLIO

    2024 . . . 16:36

    In the 1950s, the New York School of composers, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Christian Wolff and Earle Brown led a mid-century American avant-garde movement with their radical musical experiments. Brown in 1954 published his Folio and Four Systems, a collection of striking abstract-sound compositions emblematic of his concept of “open form.” They were minimalist both in material and somewhat in notation, inspired by the abstract art of Alexander Calder and Jackson Pollock. The famous score of Brown’s Dec.’52 in the Folio was just a stark rectilinear graphic of black rectangles separated in white space.

    My massive project, Animated Landscapes – Sketchbook for Small Orchestra took Impressionist art as its inspiration. Wanting now to turn a fresh aesthetic page, I actually turn back to my own avant-garde experimental roots of the 1960s and ’70s. This FOLIO is a collection of 2024 abstract sound sculptures, in the form of mobiles: sound-mass textures that reappear in various orders and combinations. Following Brown’s model, their subtitles are dates referring back to significant times and places in my personal history — a kind of musical memoir.

    The first mobile, Aug ’76 (Ann Arbor), builds massive sonorities isolated by silent time-space, similar to some of Morton Feldman’s piano music. The second, Dec ’86 (Denton), pays homage to Brown’s Folio with playful pointillism. My next Folio page, July ’17 (Good Harbor Bay), captures the rhythms of sparkling sunlight on windblown Lake Michigan. And the last, June ’24 (San Marcos), is directly inspired by Brown’s Dec.’52 in its narrow palette of static sound blocks, separated by lots of silent time-space in open form.