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…and the Beast shall Dance
for two bass clarinets
I. The Beast Awakens...
II. ...and the Beast shall Creep...
III. ...and the Beast shall Dance...
IV. The Beast Attacks!
V. ... and the Beast shall slumber
Playing score with extra duo part
Level of difficulty: difficult
NDV 30047P
…and the Beast… began it’s life with no beastly intentions whatever, as nothing more than an etude for tuning the interval of the perfect fifth.
(The interval of the perfect fifth is, after the octave, the most sturdy, solid, and consonant of intervals.) Jeff Anderle, my partner in the bass clarinet duo Sqwonk, and I had recently discovered the profound difference it made when the intervals we played were perfectly in tune, and this was especially true of perfect fifths.
The resonances and overtones that perfectly in tune bass clarinets produce were astonishing and captivated our ears and imaginations.
So I started writing a piece all in parallel perfect fifths for usto use to practice tuning.
As the piece unfolded, I began to get an image of some sort of large, lumbering creature.
The first part of the piece (which became the last movement of …and the Beast…) was heavy and aggressive, drawing inspiration from heavy metal music, but in the end it wound down into gentle undulations, finally giving up its parallel fifths for a sweetly lyrical, yet still dark and mysterious, floating melody.
It seemed that the beast I had unleashed at the beginning had lain down to rest by the end, so I titled it …and the Beast shall Slumber.
It was Jeff’s idea that there could be other movements about other activities of the beast. Ultimately …and the Beast shall Slumber became the last movement, preceded by The Beast Awakens, …and the Beast shall Creep…, ...and the Beast shall Dance…, and …the Beast Attacks!..., a sort of day in the life of the common fantastical beast.
The spirit of this piece was also inspired by a solo bass clarinet piece by my former composition teacher Elinor Armer entitled Beast which I have performed a couple of times.
