Thomas Clark – composer / digital artist

Tag: Sinfonietta

  • 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

  • Sur la Neige

    Sur la Neige

    2019            oboe, clarinet            duration: 8 minutes

    Written for Pleasant Street Players Ian Davidson and Vanguel Tangarov, colleagues at the Texas State School of Music, Sur la Neige is a snow fantasy on three quoted musical ideas. The work begins with an obscure quote from Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat, elaborated and then transitioning into a quote from Debussy’s Prelude No. 6 in his Préludes, Book I, subtitled “de pas sur la neige.” “Eventually, a small decorative figure from Janácek’s Sinfonietta appears and quickly disappears like a scurrying bystroušky (fox).

    Two memories of walking in the snow stand out in long-term memory. In about 1965, one recreation of a restless Michigan teenager on winter nights was to put on boots and parka and hike through snow-covered fields and forest in the moonlight. In 1992, my composer friend Arnošt Parsch led me on a walk into the logging forest above his Moravian village, Bílovice nad Svitavou. Through late-fall snowflakes, we retraced the steps of Janácek, passed the natural-spring well and the Sokol tavern up to a beautiful promontory view of the snow-covered village below.

    MIDI preview:

    To request performance materials and permission, email the composer, tc24@txstate.edu.