SOLO INSTRUMENT - Theme and Absurdities (1993) - clarinet
Duration - 4:00
clarinet solo
“Bermel’s “Theme and Absurdities” is a short, dizzying clarinet solo that spins off into fanciful pyrotechnics, weaving in bits of cartoon grotesquerie, angular modernist gestures, Benny Goodman swoops, baroque filigree, drunken glissandos, klezmer riffs, operatic high notes and theatrical dialogues between the high register and the low. The whole thing ends with a note of humor and hope, trailing off with the sunrise opening of Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra.”
“Most conspicuous was composer-clarinetist Derek Bermel. He played his Theme and Absurdities, flaunting its stubborn atonality and braying glisses that led finally to a tonal arpeggio broken off by an appoggiatura out of the introduction to ‘Zarathustra.’. . Bermel, & with pianist Claudio Martinez-Mehner, emphasized both the lyricism and liveliness in his own ‘SchiZm’.””
Score & Parts Rental
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Program Notes
Theme and Absurdities is a humorously virtuosic piece for solo clarinet, a spoof of all those loveable yet undeniably annoying theme and variations pieces based on some aria. A whole bunch of these were written for clarinet between about 1850 and 1930, and they make great encore pieces. This one is a particularly nightmarish tribute to the genre: the variations are served up in eight-bar chunks, growing steadily in ridiculousness.
The nugget of the piece is contained in the opening phrase. The theme is complex - certainly unsingable, with large jumps through the interval of a seventh - and almost as absurd as the eleven "absurdities" (and coda) that follow.
Theme and Absurdities employs a huge pitch range; at one point the clarinet ekes out a high D. Daring three-octave leaps are taken, technique itself becomes the subject of ridicule (chromatic runs, flutter-tonguing, notes jam-packed into a few measures,) and directionality is added in the coda as the clarinet is unceremoniously waved from side to side. The variations end with a quote from Also Sprach Zarathustra - a fitting bit of pomposity for the whole endeavor.
- Mic Holwin
(adapted from his note for Derek Bermel's CRI recording of the piece)